J. Jance - Day of the Dead

When the Reverend Moon finally finished, he looked around the room. “Would anyone care to make additional comments about Mr. Ortiz?”

Delia hadn’t planned on speaking at the funeral. For one thing, Wanda hadn’t asked her to, although, as tribal attorney, Delia was-next to Fat Crack himself-the most prominent member of the family. While the Reverend Moon looked expectantly around the room, Delia was surprised to find herself rising to her feet and moving forward. As she made her way up the steps, she stumbled and would have fallen. Baby, Fat Crack’s older son-the one she had rejected-reached out a steadying hand and caught her.

By the time she reached the lectern and turned to face the audience, her knees were wobbly. Her nervousness wasn’t due to being unaccustomed to public speaking. She had been doing that for years. What worried her was speaking in front of this large assembly of her own people who were, in many ways, as alien to her as Fat Crack was to the Reverend Moon.

Not sure how to begin, Delia glanced down at the front row in time to see both her husband and Baby smiling at her and nodding encouragingly. Those two nods, offered in unison, made it possible for her to speak.

“I’m here today,” she began, “because Gigh Tahpani saved my life, not once but twice.” There was a subtle shift in the audience. Delia’s was the first reference to the beloved Fat Crack, as opposed to some stranger named Gabriel Ortiz. Sensing that the audience appreciated what she had said, Delia took a deep breath and continued.

“When I was seven, our family situation was bad. My parents were having problems, and my mother needed to get away to go to school in Tempe. The nuns at Topawa helped by offering us the use of a broken-down car, one that wasn’t running. Fat Crack came in that old tow truck of his. It took all day long, but he got the car running again.

“Leaving the reservation that day was what made it possible for my mother to get her education and for me to get mine. Years later, I was living in Washington, D.C., and I was having troubles with my husband-the same kind of troubles my parents once had. One day, when I barely knew where to turn, Fat Crack showed up and offered me a job-here at home, back on the reservation. When he first offered me the job, I told him no, but as many of you know from personal experience, telling my father-in-law no and making it stick were two very different things.

“When I came back, my aunt Julia despaired that I’d ever find myself a nice man to marry. Wanda told me that by then, she and Fat Crack had reached much the same conclusions about their two sons, Baby and Leo, who were both confirmed bachelors. I sometimes wonder if Fat Crack didn’t shake a few feathers at us or do the Peace Smoke, because Baby and Christine are married now; so are Leo and I.”

A wave of gentle but approving laughter washed around the room. When it died down, Delia resumed. “Gigh Tahpani was a medicine man. He didn’t really want the job, but he took it. He was careful about it and serious. Over the years he and I had our disagreements, but he was a good man-an honorable man. I will miss him every day from now on.”

To the sound of polite applause, Delia stepped down from the podium. As she returned to her seat, Leo reached out and patted her knee appreciatively. At the same time, Lani Walker stepped up to the lectern. Lani was everything Delia wasn’t right then. Lani was young and slim and lovely. Delia felt old, fat, pregnant, and very, very jealous. What right did Lani have to stand up in public and pretend that she, too, was a member of the Ortiz family?

“My name is Lani Walker. When I was a baby, Wanda Ortiz saved my life. Later, when I was adopted, Gigh Tahpani and Wanda became my godparents.”

Delia had heard the story of the Ant-Bit Child and how Wanda and Gabe Ortiz had helped arrange the baby’s unorthodox adoption when Lani’s own blood relatives, regarding the child as a dangerous object, had refused to take her. No doubt many of the people in the gym that afternoon remembered the story as well, but none of them stirred. They listened with rapt attention.

“Later,” Lani continued, “when I needed a medicine man, Fat Crack stayed beside me during a very difficult time. Like Delia, I’m glad so many people came here today to honor him and, again like Delia, I will miss him forever.”

Delia watched as Lani returned to her seat in the second row, looking poised and lovely and totally at ease. There was nothing Lani had said with which Delia could find fault. She had made no inappropriate claims of kinship, nor had she wallowed in a public display of grief, but the very fact that she had spoken at all still rankled. For a few moments, Delia herself had glimpsed part of what made Lani special-the very thing that Fat Crack had valued about her, and yet…

As applause for Lani’s comments died away and someone else made his way to the lectern, Leo touched Delia’s knee. “Are you all right?” he whispered.

Delia nodded, but for some reason she was unable to speak. In spite of herself, she was beginning to see how her father-in-law had exerted the same kind of influence on Lani’s life as he had on Delia’s. Maybe Lani did have the right to be at the funeral, speaking and grieving. Maybe Delia herself was wrong.

“I’m okay,” she said, but by then she was giving way to tears. As the next speaker began, Delia leaned on Leo’s shoulder and let him comfort her.

“Shhh,” he whispered. “It’s all right.” But Delia wasn’t convinced. She suspected that by shedding tears in public she had let her father-in-law down one last time. With Fat Crack dead, there would be no way for Delia to redress the wrong she had done him.

By the time the mile-long funeral cortege reached the cemetery at Ban Thak, the sun had already dropped behind the crest of Ioligam. People crowded into the dusty cemetery, stumbling over crumbled headstones and crooked crosses and standing on what must have been graves themselves as they strained to hear whatever words the Reverend Moon had to say this time.

After the casket had been lowered into the ground and properly covered with new blankets fresh from JC Penney, the crowd remained transfixed while Leo and Richard helped their mother drop the first shovelful of earth onto the casket. One at a time, each of the children took their separate turns. After that, while the menfolk worked at filling the grave, women and children headed toward the feast house, where the smells of wood smoke from cooking fires filled the warm desert twilight.

With people lining up outside, Wanda took her place at the door to the feast house and offered a short blessing. “Thank you, Lord, that in this time of sorrow you offer us food that we may remember to live. Amen.”

Then she flung wide the feast-house door and let the first group enter.

From where Brian stood, the line seemed to stretch forever. Every fifteen or twenty minutes, a group of forty or fifty people would be allowed inside. Only when that group had finished eating and left was the next group admitted. Brian had come home late. He and Kath had arrived at the high school gym just after the service started. Now he and Brandon Walker stood near the end of the line. With both their wives helping cook and serve, there was no sense rushing.

“There are lots of people,” Brian observed. “It’s hard to imagine they won’t run out of food or dishes.”

Brandon had been to plenty of Tohono O’odham feasts, but this was by far the largest he’d ever seen. He nodded. “The old miracle of the loaves and fishes all over again,” he said.

The two men stood slightly apart from the rest of the line. Had Leo or Baby been with them, Brian and Brandon would have been included in some of the easy laughter and lighthearted banter from other people waiting in line. Without Ortiz relatives to run interference, the two Anglos were left alone-Mil-gahn outsiders in an essentially Indian world.