J. JANCE - Hour of the Hunter

So the woman moved the rock, but by then the Large Old Coyote’s foot was so badly injured that he still could not walk. So the woman fed him and watered him and nursed him back to health. She called him Old Lame Coyote.

In the evening, when the woman’s husband did not come home and she was very lonely, Old Lame Coyote would tell her news of the desert-where to find honey, when the rains would come again, where the best pinon nuts could be found. In this way, the lonely woman and Lame Old Coyote became good friends.

Once she got out of the car, it was all Myrna Louise could do to make it into the house and down the hall to her room. Without taking off her clothing, she fell sideways across the bed. She was no longer angry with Andrew, and she hoped by now that he was over being angry with her. It was too bad that whenever they spent any time together, they always ended up quarreling.

She was awakened by a knock on the door, and there was Lida, from next door, holding the newspaper and two pieces of mail.

“Back so soon?” Lida asked. “From the way Phil talked this morning, I thought you’d be gone for at least a week. I already told the newspaper boy to stop delivery, just like Phil said, but he had to deliver today’s and maybe tomorrow’s. Here’s your mail. I picked that up, too. No sense leaving it for someone to go snooping through.”

Myrna Louise stared blankly. Lida’s words made no sense. She had stopped the paper and was collecting the mail? What was going on? “I’m sorry, Lida,” Myrna Louise said. “I’m not feeling well.”

“No wonder you came back. I was afraid the kind of trip Phil was planning would be too much for you. Driving to the Grand Canyon isn’t my idea of a picnic.”

Grand Canyon? Myrna Louise thought. Who’s going there? It was more than Myrna Louise could stand. “You’ll have to excuse me, Lida, I’ve got to go back and lie down.”

Brandon Walker took off right at five. He drove straight to the house. He parked the Galaxy and pocketed the keys, then he drove his mother’s Olds to the hospital. Louella was sitting in the ICU waiting room. Brandon had planned to stay at the hospital for only a few minutes, but as soon as he saw his mother’s ravaged face, he knew there was trouble.

She ran to him and buried her head against his shoulder. “I’m so glad you’re here,” she sobbed. “I’ve done what the first doctor said, I’ve turned off the machine. The nurse told me I could go in now and wait, but I’m afraid to be there alone. Stay with me, Brandon, please. Stay until it’s over.”

What could he do, tell his mother he had a prior commitment? Taking Louella gently by the shoulders, he looked down into her grief-stricken face. “I have to make a phone call,” he said.

“You won’t leave me, will you?”

“No, Mom,” he said, shaking his head. “I’ll be right back.”

Sorting through Iona’s boxes was all the emotional baggage Diana could handle for one day. Gary’s would have to wait. When she finished, she carried the garbage outside, dumped it, and set fire to the trash barrel. As she stood there watching it burn, she felt a peculiar satisfaction, the lifting of a lifetime’s burden.

Diana watched the flames lick through Iona’s ancient oven mitt and understood at last why her mother considered herself “damaged goods,” why she had stayed with Max Cooper no matter what. Iona owed him. He grudgingly lent Iona the use of his name for her baby, for Diana, thus saving Iona’s family and reputation from savaging by Joseph’s sharp-tongued scandalmongers, but Iona paid a heavy price for that dubious privilege, paid with every waking and sleeping moment of her life.

The flames in the burning barrel soared higher, kicking up and over the surrounding metal. In the leaping flames, something else caught fire, something more than just Francine Cooper’s useless castoffs. Max Cooper’s hold on his supposed daughter was being consumed as well. At last Diana grasped why Max had despised her so, why he had hated her and berated her for as long as she could remember. She understood now why he had so resented the rodeo-queen escape hatch that a resourceful Iona, with George Deeson’s timely help, had managed to open for her.

But knowledge brought with it an ineffable sadness. If only she had known the truth earlier, while there was still time to ask her mother about her real father or maybe even ask George Deeson himself. Would he have told her, if she had asked him on one of those endless Saturday mornings when it had been just the two of them out in the corral with Waldo? Would things have been different if she had known the old man was really her grandfather?

What was it the Bible said? “The truth will set you free.” Was Diana Cooper Ladd free now? Maybe. She felt lighter than she had in years. As the flames charred through the debris, not only did Max lose his grip on her, so did the past.

Just then, Bone dashed up and dropped a tennis ball at her feet. With a laugh, she ruffled the dog’s shaggy head, then threw the ball for him as hard as she could. Eagerly, he raced off after it, returning with it, prancing and proud, tail awag.

“You funny old dog,” she said, and threw the ball again.

Over and over she threw the ball. Over and over he brought it back. It surprised her to find that each time Bone retrieved the ball, the silly, pointless game made her laugh. Laughter felt good, and so did the hot sun on her back.

“Come on, Mister Oh’o,” she said at last when the dog was panting so hard his scrawny sides shook. “Let’s go inside, cool off, and figure out what’s for dinner.”

After their naps, Davy and Rita entered the main house to the surprising but familiar smell of baking tortillas. In the kitchen, they found Diana struggling with stiff wads of tortilla dough, waxed paper, and a rolling pin. A stack of misshapen tortillas sat on a platter next to a smoking electric griddle. The tortillas were amazingly ugly-thick in some places, punched full of holes in others. Some were more than slightly burned, but for a first attempt, they weren’t too bad.

Rita touched one of the balls of dough still sitting in a mixing bowl, on the countertop. “A little more shortening next time,” she suggested. “Then you can pat them out by hand instead of using a rolling pin.”

“Mom, did you make these all by yourself?” Davy asked wonderingly. “Can I have one?”

“If you’re brave enough,” Diana told him. “They’re pretty pitiful.”

Slathering a load of peanut butter on one side, Davy tried a bite and diplomatically pronounced the tortilla “almost as good as Rita’s.” With a second peanut butter-covered tortilla in one hand and a plain one for Bone in the other, Davy and Oh’o went outside to play.

Rita sat down beside the kitchen table and watched Diana work. The Anglo woman seemed self-conscious under the Papago’s scrutiny, but she kept on rolling the dough and tossing the resulting crooked sheets onto the waiting griddle.

“While I was just lying there in Sells,” Rita began, “I was thinking about how you helped me after Gina died, when people wanted me to leave because I was bad luck.”

“Forget it,” Diana said determinedly. “What they thought doesn’t matter. I’ve been delighted to have you with me. With us,” she added.

“But it does matter,” Rita returned. “I thought I was leaving there just to go somewhere and die, but helping you and taking care of Davy gave me back my luck. It made me young again. The other day, the doctors said I was dead in that ambulance, but thinking about Davy made me want to live, made me want to come back.”

Diana Ladd put down the rolling pin and brushed hair from her sweat-dampened face, leaving a white smudge of flour on her face.