J. Jance: Kiss the Bees

She regretted her outburst almost immediately, but she had retreated to her office without an apology while Brandon had made tracks for his damned woodpile. And two weeks later, when Diana Ladd Walker flew off to New York, she had done so alone, with the quarrel between them still unresolved. A month and a half later, his role as "author consort" was still a bone of contention.

When the invitation came for her to speak at the annual Friends of the Library banquet, there had been yet another firefight. This time, though, Diana had dug in her heels.

"Look," she had told him. "I can see your not going to the faculty tea. If I could get out of that one myself, I would. But the library banquet is something for the whole community, the community that elected you to office for sixteen years. People expect you to be there. I expect you to be there. We're married, Brandon. I don't want to spend my life out in public as one of those married singles."

"But I hate all that crap," he argued. "I hate standing around with a drink in my hand, looking like a sap, and listening to some little old lady talk about something I've never heard of."

"Get over it," Diana had snapped back at him. "If you were tough enough to face down armed crooks in your day, you ought to be able to stand up to any little old lady in the land."

Stepping out of the shower, Diana stood toweling her hair dry. Suddenly, out of nowhere, something her mother had told her once came back to her as clearly as if she had heard the words yesterday instead of thirty years earlier.

Iona Dade Cooper had been at home in Joseph, Oregon, dying of cancer. Diana, away at school at the University of Oregon in Eugene, had finally been forced to drop out temporarily to care for her. Diana had been sitting in the chair next to her mother's bed telling of her secret ambition not only to marry Garrison Ladd but also to become a writer.

"You can't have it all, you know," Iona had said quietly. "If you try to do too much, something is bound to suffer."

Standing in the bathroom thirty years later, Diana had to swallow a sudden lump in her throat. She remembered arguing the point with her mother back then, telling Iona passionately exactly how wrong she was.

"These are the sixties," Diana had said with the absolute conviction of a know-it-all twenty-one-year-old. "Women are moving into their own now, Mother. Everything is possible, you'll see."

Iona Dade Cooper had died a few months later without seeing anything of the kind. And Diana, now several years older than her mother had lived to be, was forced to acknowledge that Iona's assessment was one hundred percent accurate.

Mom, you were right, after all,Diana Cooper Ladd Walker admitted to herself. You really can't have it all.

Now in that long ago time the earth-jeweth-was not yet firm and still as it is today. It was shaking and quivering all the time. That made it hard for the four to travel. So Earth Medicine Man-Jeweth Mahkai-threw himself down and stopped the shaking of the earth. And that was the first land.

But the land was floating around in separate pieces. So Earth Medicine Man called to the Spider Men.Totkihhud O'othham came out of the floating ground and went all over the world spinning their webs and tying the pieces of earth together. And that is how we have it today-land and water.

ThenI'itoi wanted to find the center of the earth. So he sent Coyote toward the south and Big Black Beetle to the north. He said they must go as fast and as far as they could and then return to him.

Bitokoi — Big Black Beetle-was back quite a while beforeBan — Coyote-returned. In this wayI'itoi knew that he had not yet found the center of the earth.

Then Spirit of Goodness tookBitokoi andBan a little farther south and sent them off once more. Again Big Black Beetle came back before Coyote, so I'itoi moved still farther toward the south.

On the fourth tryBitokoi and Coyote came back toI'itoi at exactly the same time. In that way Elder Brother knew he was exactly in the center of the world. Because the Spirit of Goodness should be the center of all things, this was whereI'itoi wished to be.

And this center of all things where Elder Brother lives is calledTohono O'othham Jeweth, which means Land of the Desert People.

Mitch Johnson waited on the hill, watching and sketching, until Brandon Walker went inside around ten-thirty. By then he had several interesting thumbnail drawings-color studies-that he'd be able to produce if anyone ever questioned his reason for being there.

"You see, Mitch," Andy had told him years ago, "you always have to have some logical and defensible reason for being where you are and for doing whatever it is that you're supposedly doing. It's a kind of protective coloration, and it works the same way that the patterns on a rattlesnake's back allow it to blend into the rocks and shadows of the land it inhabits.

"The mask that allowed me to do that was writing. Writing takes research, you see. Calling something research gave me a ticket into places most people never have an opportunity to go. Drawing can do the same for you. You're lucky in that you have some innate ability, although, if I were you, I'd use some of the excess time we both seem to have at the moment to improve on those skills. You'll be surprised how doing so will stand you in good stead."

That was advice Mitch Johnson had been happy to follow, and he had carried it far beyond the scope of Andy's somewhat limited vision. Claiming to be an artist had made it possible to park his RV-a cumbersome and nearly new Bounder-on a patch of desert just off Coleman Road within miles of where Andrew Carlisle had estimated it would most likely be needed. The rancher he had made arrangements with had been more than happy to have six months' rent in advance and in cash, with the only stipulation being that Mitch keep the gate closed and locked.

"No problem," Mitch had told the guy. "I'm looking for privacy. Keeping the gate locked will be as much of a favor to me as it is for you."

And so, Mitch Johnson-after sorting through his catalog of fake IDs-took up residence on an electricity-equipped corner of the Lazy 4 Ranch under the name of M. Vega, artist. He was there, he told his landlord, to paint the same scenes over and over, in all their tiny variations through the changing seasons of the year.

The Bounder had been parked on the ranch for two months now. Long enough for locals to accept that he was there. He worried sometimes that he might possibly run into someone who had known him before, in that old life, so he mostly stayed away from the trading post and did all his shopping-including buying periodic canisters of butane-at stores on the far northeast side of town.

And that's where he headed that particular morning-to Tucson. If he was going to have company for a day or two, he needed to have plenty of supplies laid in-extra food and water both.

"It's a good plan, Mitch," Andy had told him. "My part is to make sure you have everything you need to pull it off and to get away afterward. Yours is to follow that plan and make it work."

When Andy's voice came to him out of the blue like that, so clearly and purposefully, it was hard to remember the man was dead. It took Mitch back to countless nighttime conversations when their quiet voices had flowed back and forth in the noisy privacy of their prison cell. That was when and where they had first crafted the plan and where they had refined it.

And now, putting that long-awaited plan into action, Mitch Johnson felt honor-bound to do it right. The emotional turmoil about to be visited upon Brandon and Diana Walker's complacent lives would make a fitting memorial for Andy Carlisle, the only real friend Mitch had ever had. It would mean far more than any marble slab Mitch might have had erected in a cemetery.