J. JANCE - Hour of the Hunter

The blonde nodded.

“Good. I’ll have a bottle on ice by the time you get there. Don’t be late.”

“I won’t,” the blonde told him with another brave smile. “I have a feeling my luck just took a turn for the better.”

When Looks At Nothing left Rita’s room, Effie Joaquin expected to take him back to his camp near the outskirts of town. He thanked her for the offer and said he’d find his way alone.

“But it’s dark out there,” Effie objected.

The old man smiled. “Darkness is my friend,” he told her.

Effie considered herself personally responsible for bringing the old man to the hospital. She didn’t want anything to happen to him on his way home.

“It’s just that other people might not be able to see you,” she snapped impatiently.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “It isn’t far.”

Keeping to the shoulder of the road, Looks At Nothing made his way to the gas station. At once a dog began to bark. The old man followed the sound, making the dog bark even louder.

“Who is it?” a woman’s voice demanded from inside the house.

“Looks At Nothing,” the medicine man answered. “I’m looking for Fat Crack.”

“Just a minute,” she said. “I’ll get him.”

Moments later, a door opened. “What do you want?” Fat Crack asked.

“To speak to you,” Looks At Nothing answered. “About your aunt. She needs your help.”

“My help? I thought she wanted your help. After all, you’re the medicine man.”

Looks At Nothing settled cross-legged on the ground, took a cigarette out of his pouch, lit it, and offered it to Fat Crack. “Nawoj,” he said.

“Nawoj,” Fat Crack returned, accepting the cigarette gracefully because it would have been rude to do otherwise. “What’s this all about?”

“Sit,” Looks At Nothing ordered. “We must not rush.”

Reluctantly, Fat Crack did as he was told. Although his heavy body was much younger than the gaunt old medicine man’s, it wasn’t nearly as agile. Fat Crack was used to chairs. Sitting on the hard ground was uncomfortable.

“You are a man of great faith, are you not?” Looks At Nothing continued.

Fat Crack was taken aback by the directness of the medicine man’s question. “Yes,” he said. “I suppose so. Why?”

“Your aunt is in grave danger,” Looks At Nothing said.

Fat Crack nodded. “I know,” he said.

Somehow he had known that from the moment she asked him to go get the medicine man. From the way she acted, he knew there was something more serious at stake than just the physical damage from an automobile accident.

“You are very still,” Looks At Nothing observed.

“I’m thinking,” Fat Crack said. “I’m wondering what this danger to my aunt could be and why you need my help.”

“Sit here with me for a while,” Looks At Nothing said. “Smoke with me. The two of us will hold a council and let the sacred tobacco smoke fall upon our words. In this way, we will decide what to do.”

Part of Fat Crack, the Christian Scientist part of him, began to buck and balk. Talk of sacred tobacco smoke didn’t sit well with the teachings of Mary Baker Eddy. Still, the gentle power wielded by the medicine man didn’t seem inherently evil.

“Gabe,” the woman called impatiently from the doorway of the house. “Are you coming back inside?”

“After,” Fat Crack replied. “I will come in after, but first this old man and I are going to talk.”

How did my daddy die?” Davy asked.

Diana Ladd was tucking her son into his bed when he asked the direct, awful question she had dreaded for years. Always before, during oblique conversations, she had skirted the issue, promising herself that if he ever asked straight out, she would be forced to respond in kind. Wanting to protect him, she had rehearsed countless carefully nonjudgmental answers, in hopes that one day Davy would grow up and form his own opinions about his father.

Diana sat down on the edge of the bed and placed one hand on Davy’s chest. In the soft glow of the night-light, his eyes were luminous dark pools gazing up at her. She swallowed hard.

“He committed suicide,” she said.

Davy frowned. “Suicide. What does that mean?”

“Your father killed himself,” Diana answered. “With a gun.”

“Why? Didn’t he love us?”

Davy’s ingenuousness wrung at Diana’s heart. She fought back tears, and bitter answers as well. “He didn’t know you,” she said gently. “You weren’t even born yet.”

“Well, why did he do it then?”

“He was scared, I guess.”

“About what?”

“About what was going to happen to him. You see, there had been a. .” She paused, losing heart, unable to say the word murder aloud. “There had been an accident,” she finished lamely. “Your father was afraid of getting into trouble.”

“Did he kill someone?”

Stunned, Diana wondered if Davy had somehow learned the truth. How else could his questions cut so close to the bones of truth? None of this was going the way she’d planned. “Is that what someone told you?” she asked.

Davy shrugged. “Not really. I just wanted to know why they called me that.”

“Called you what?”

“Me’akam Mad,” he replied.

Diana Ladd knew some Papago, but not nearly as much as Davy. This she didn’t recognize at all. “What does that mean?”

“Killer’s Child,” Davy whispered.

Instantly, Diana was outraged. “Who called you that?”

“Some of the Indian ladies. At the hospital. They thought I didn’t understand.”

Not trusting her ability to speak, Diana got up and paced to the window. She stared out at a star-studded sky over the jagged black shadow of mountain. Even with the cooler running, the house was warm, but she felt suddenly chilled.

“Is it true?” Davy insisted. “Did my father kill somebody?”

“Yes,” Diana answered at last, abandoning all pretense. Davy had to be told.

“Who?”

“Her name was Gina, Gina Antone.”

“Rita’s granddaughter?”

Diana nodded. “Yes.”

“But Rita loves us. Why would she if. .”

Diana turned decisively from the window. “Davy, listen to me. Your father was there when Gina died, but he didn’t do it, and he didn’t remember anything that happened. He fell asleep, and when he woke up, she was dead. Another man was there with them-a friend of your father’s, a man named Andrew Carlisle. He tried to put all the blame on your father.”

“What happened to him?”

“The other man? To Carlisle?” Davy nodded. “He went to jail, finally. The state prison. Rita and I saw to it.”

“But he didn’t die?”

“No.”

“People still think my father did it.”

“Probably. He wasn’t alive to defend himself.”

“And the other man was?”

“Yes, and he hired expensive lawyers. He was an Anglo, a well-known one, a teacher from the university, and the dead girl was only an Indian. Everybody acted as though it didn’t matter if an Indian got killed, as though she weren’t important. With your father dead, it was a terrible time for me, but it was worse for Rita. She didn’t have anyone to help her, so I did-with the police, with Detective Walker and the prosecutor. If I hadn’t been there, Carlisle never would have gone to jail.”

Most of Diana Ladd’s impassioned explanation fell on deaf ears. Davy plucked out only one solid fact from the raging torrent of words. “Detective Walker? The man who was here this morning? The one who took me for my stitches?”

“Yes.”

“He knew about my father, too?”

“Yes.”

Abruptly, Davy flopped over on his side, turning away from her and facing the wall. “I don’t want to talk anymore.”