J. JANCE - Hour of the Hunter

Under normal circumstances, Davy would have fought tooth and nail at any suggestion of a nap, but that day, when Rita lay down on her old-fashioned box spring mattress with its frail metal headboard, Davy climbed up onto the bed, while Bone settled down comfortably on a nearby rug. Because of the cast, Rita lay on her back with her arm elevated on pillows. Davy nestled in close to her other side and fell sound asleep.

Davy slept, but Rita didn’t. She looked around the room, grateful to be home, glad to have survived whatever the Mil-gahn doctors had dished out. To be fair, Dr. Rosemead was a whole lot different from the first white doctor she’d met, an odd-looking little man with strange, rectangular glasses and huge red-veined nose who had been called in for a consultation when she first got sick in California.

The Baileys hadn’t needed another girl-of-all-work, so Gordon found her a job at a farm a few miles up the road. There, barely a month later, she began to feel tired. A cough came on, accompanied by night sweats. She tried to hide the fact that she was sick, because she didn’t want to risk losing her job and being sent home, but finally, when the lady found her coughing up blood, she sent Rita to bed and summoned the one itinerant doctor who treated the valley’s Indian and Mexican laborers.

Dr. Aldus was his name, and Rita never forgot it, no matter how hard she tried. He came to see Dancing Quail in the filthy workers’ shack where she lay in bed, too sick to move. He examined her and then spoke to the foreman who waited in the background to take word to the farm owner’s wife.

“We’ll have to take the baby,” the doctor said. “The girl may live, but not the baby. Go bring my things from the car. Ask the cook to set some water boiling.”

The doctor came back to the bed and loomed over Dancing Quail. “It’s going to be fine,” he said. “Everything’s going to be okay.”

Those were the exact same words Dr. Rosemead had used all these years later, but with Dr. Aldus, everything was definitely not okay. His breath reeked of alcohol. He swayed from side to side as he stood next to her bed.

“No,” Dancing Quail pleaded, struggling to get up. “Leave my baby alone,” but he pushed her back down and held her pinned until the foreman returned, bringing with him the doctor’s bag and a set of thick, heavy straps. Somehow the two of them strapped her to the bed frame, imprisoning her, holding her flat. The doctor pressed an evil-smelling cloth to her face. Soon Rita could fight no longer.

She woke up much later, once more drenched in sweat. The straps were gone. She felt her flattened belly and knew it was empty. She was empty. The straps were gone, and so was her baby.

She cried out. Suddenly, Gordon was there, leaning over her in the doctor’s stead, his broad face gentle and caring. “Why didn’t you call me?” he asked, speaking in Papago. “Why didn’t you send someone to tell me you were sick so I could come take care of you?”

Rita couldn’t answer. All she could do was cough and cry.

Around four, Rita shook Davy. “Wake up,” she said. “Fat Crack will come soon and I must be ready.”

Davy sat up, rubbing his eyes, “Ready for what? Where are you going?”

“To Sells. For a ceremony.”

“What kind of ceremony? Do you have to leave again? You just got here.”

“It’s important,” she said. “The ceremony’s for you, Olhoni.”

His eyes widened. “For me? Really?”

She smiled. “Really. The singers will start tonight. On the fourth night, you will be baptized. A medicine man will do it.”

“A real medicine man? What will he do?”

“Don’t ask so many questions, Little One. You will see when time comes. He will baptize you in the way of the Tohono O’ odham. Have you spoken to the priest yet?”

“Priest?” Davy returned. “Oh, the one out at San Xavier?” Rita nodded. “Mom saw him, this morning. She said he was coming to see me today, this afternoon, I guess. I don’t know why.”

Rita sighed in relief. Father John had asked, and Diana had consented. “I do,” she said. “Listen, Olhoni, you must listen very carefully. You are very old not to be baptized, not in your mother’s way and not in the Indian way, either. Most people are baptized when they are babies. This is not good, so we are going to fix it. I asked Father John to speak to your mother, because where the Anglo religion is concerned, it is better for Mil-gahn to speak to Mil-gahn . Do you understand?”

Davy nodded seriously, but Rita doubted she was making sense. “When Father John comes to see you, do whatever he asks.”

“But what will he ask?”

“He will speak to you of the Mil-gahn religion, of your mother’s religion.”

“But I thought you said a medicine man. .”

“Olhoni,” Rita said sternly. “You are a child of two worlds, a child with two mothers, are you not?” Davy nodded. “Then you can be a boy with two religions, two instead of none, isn’t it?”

Davy thought about it a moment before he nodded again.

“So tonight,” Rita continued, “whenever Fat Crack comes to get me, I will go out to Sells and be there for the start of the ceremony. I will return during the day, but each night I must go again. On the fourth night, the last night, you will come, too. Either your mother will bring you, or I will come back for you myself.”

“Will there be a feast?” he asked.

“Yes, now get up. I need your help.”

Davy scrambled off the bed. “What do you want, Nana Dahd ?”

“Over there, in the bottom drawer of my dresser, there is a small basket. Bring it.”

Davy did as he was told, carrying the small, rectangular basket back to the bed. “What’s this?” he asked.

“My medicine basket.”

As he handed it to her, something rattled inside. “What’s in it, Nana Dahd ? Can I see?”

With some difficulty, Rita had managed to pull herself up on the side of the bed. Now, she patted the mattress, motioning for Davy to sit beside her. “You’ll have to.” She smiled. “I can’t.”

Davy worked at prying off the tight-fitting lid. It was a testimony to Understanding Woman’s craftsmanship that even after so many years, even with the repairs Rita had made from time to time, the lid of the basket still fit snugly enough that it required effort to remove it. When it finally came loose, Davy handed the opened basket back to Rita.

One at a time, she took items out and held them up to the light. After looking at each one, she handed it to Davy. First was the awl, the owij , Rita called it. Davy knew what that was for because he had often watched her use the sharp tool to poke holes in the coiled cactus to make her baskets.

Next came a piece of pottery.

“What’s that?” Davy asked.

“See the turtle here?” Rita asked, pointing to the design etched into the broken shard. Davy nodded. “This is from one of my great-grandmother’s pots, Olhoni. When a woman dies, the people must break her pots in order to free her spirit. My grandmother kept this piece of her mother’s best pot and gave it to me.”

Next she held up the seashell. “Grandfather brought this back from his first salt-gathering expedition, and this spine of feather is one my father once gave to his mother when he was younger than you are now. The clay doll was used for healing.”

Next, Davy saw a hank of black hair. “What’s that?” he asked.

“It’s something we used to use against the Ohb , the Apaches,” Rita explained. “Something to keep our enemies away.”

At the very bottom of the basket were two last items-a piece of purple rock and something small made of metal and ribbon.