by J. A. Jance
There was a locked storage unit under the bed in the Bounder. In it were two 18-by-24-inch canvases. Each oil painting was of Larry Wraike, one before and one after. The first was of a moderately handsome overfed businessman in a well-pressed suit, the kind of dully representative portrait that an overly proud wife might have commissioned in honor of some special occasion. An art critic seeing the second painting would have assumed, mistakenly, that this was an imaginative rendition of a soul in torment.
Only Mitch Johnson knew that that one, too, was fully representational. He thought of them as a matched pair-"Larry Wraike Before" and "Larry Wraike After."
Half an hour after returning to the RV, when he held the unfinished drawing up to a mirror to examine it, the artist was pleased with the likeness. Anyone who knew Quentin Walker would have recognized him. The picture showed him sitting slump-shouldered, his elbows resting on the bar, his eyes morosely focused on the beer in the bottom of the glass in front of him. Quentin Walker Before.
Looking at the picture, though, Mitch Johnson realized something else about it-something he had never noticed before that moment-how very much the son resembled the father. That hadn't been nearly so apparent when Quentin first showed up in Florence as it was now. He had come to prison as nothing but a punk kid. The hard years in between had matured and hardened him into what Brandon Walker had been when Mitch first knew him.
"Well, I'll be damned!" Mitch said to the picture reflected back from the mirror. "If you aren't your daddy's spitting image, Mr. Quentin Walker. Imagine that!"
5
They say it happened long ago that the weather grew very hot-the hottest year the Tohono O'othham had ever known. And all this happened in the hottest part of that year.
For many weeks the Indians and the animals had looked at the sky, hoping to find one cloud that would show them thatChewagi O'othham- Cloud Man-was still alive. There was not a cloud.
The water holes had been dry for a long time. The Desert People had gone far away to find water. The coyotes had followed the Indians. The wolves and foxes had gone into the mountains. All the birds had left. EvenKakaichu- Quail-who seldom leaves his own land, was forced to go away.
Gohhim Chuk- Lame Jackrabbit-had found a little shade. It was not much, just enough to keep him from burning. The tips of his ears and his tail were already burned black. And that,nawoj, is why that particular kind of jackrabbit-chuk chuhwi- is marked that same way, even today.
AsGohhim Chuk- Lame Jackrabbit-lay panting in his little bit of shade, he was wondering how he would manage the few days' journey to a cooler place. Then he sawNuhwi- Buzzard-flying over him.
Now it is the law of the desert to live and let live, that one should only kill in self-defense or to keep from starving. The animals forget this law sometimes when their stomachs are full and when there is plenty of water, but when the earth burns and when everyone is in danger, the law is always remembered. So Lame Jackrabbit did not run away when he saw Buzzard circling down over him. Buzzard knew the law of the desert as well as Lame Jackrabbit did.
Nuhwi flew in circles, lower and lower. When he was low enough, he called to Lame Jackrabbit. "I have seen something very odd back in the desert," Nuhwi said. When he was high up over the part of the desert which was burned bare, he told Lame Jackrabbit, he saw on the ground a black place that seemed to be in motion. He had circled down hoping it was water. But it was only a great crowd of Ali-chu'uchum O'othham, the Little People.
As you know,nawoj, my friend, the Little People are the bees and flies and insects of all kinds. Buzzard said these Little People were swarming around something on the ground. He saidNuhwi andGohhim Chuk must carry the news together because it might help someone. It is also the law of the desert that you must always help anyone in trouble.
Lame Jackrabbit agreed that what Buzzard had seen was very strange. Little People usually leave early when the water goes away. Lame Jackrabbit said he would carry the news.
But Gohhim Chuk, whose ears and tail were burned black, being lame, could not travel very well. So he found Coyote and told him whatNuhwi- Buzzard-had seen.
Ban- Coyote-was puzzled too. He said he would carry the message on to theTohono O'othham- the Desert People.
It was still dark when Lani's alarm buzzed in her ear. She turned it off quickly and then hurried into the bathroom to shower. Standing in front of the steamy mirror, she used a brush and hair dryer to style her shoulder-length hair. How long would it take, she wondered, for her hair to grow back out to the length it had been back in eighth grade, before she had cut it?
From first grade on, Lani Walker and Jessica Carpenter had been good friends. By the time they reached Maxwell Junior High, the two girls made a striking pair. Lani's jet-black waist-length hair and bronze complexion were in sharp contrast to Jessie's equally long white-blond hair and fair skin. Because they were always together, some of the other kids teasingly called them twins.
Their entry into eighth grade came at a time when Lani Walker needed a faithful ally. For one thing, Rita was gone. She had been dead for years, but Lani still missed her. When coping with the surprising changes in her own body or when faced with difficulties at home or in school, Lani still longed for the comfort of Nana Dahd's patient guidance. And there were difficulties at home. In fact, the whole Walker household seemed to be in a state of constant upheaval. Things had started going bad when her older stepbrother, Quentin, had been sent to prison as a result of a fatality drunk-driving accident.
Lani had been too young to realize all that was happening when Tommy disappeared, but she had watched her grim-faced parents deal with the first Quentin crisis. She had been at the far end of the living room working on a basket the night after Quentin Walker was sentenced for the drunk-driving conviction. Brandon had come into the house, shambled over to the couch, slumped down on it, and buried his face in his hands.
"Five years," he had groaned. "On the one hand it seems like a long time and yet it's nothing. He killed three people, for God's sake! How can a five-year sentence make up for that, especially when he'll probably be out in three?"
"That's what the law says," Diana returned, but Brandon remained unconvinced and uncomforted.
"Judge Davis could have given him more if he had wanted to. I can't help thinking that it's because I'm the sheriff…"
"Brandon, you have to let go of that," Diana said. "First you blame yourself for Quentin being a drunk, and now you're taking responsibility for the judge's sentence. Quentin did what he did and so did the judge. Neither one of those results has anything at all to do with you."
Lani had put her basket aside and hurried over to the couch, where she snuggled up next to her father. "It's not your fault, Daddy," she said confidently, taking one of his hands in both of hers. "You didn't do it."
"See there?" Diana had smiled. "If Lani's smart enough to see it at her age, what's the matter with you?"
"Stubborn, maybe?" Brandon had returned with a weak smile of his own.
"Not stubborn maybe," Diana answered. "Stubborn for sure."
So the family had weathered that crisis in fairly good shape. The next one, when it came, was far worse. As near as Lani could tell, it all started about the time the letter arrived from a man named Andrew Carlisle, the same person Nana Dahd had always referred to as the evil Ohb. Within months, Diana was working on a book project with Andrew Carlisle while Brandon stalked in and out of the house in wounded silence.
Lani was hard-pressed to understand how the very mention of Carlisle's name was able to cause a fight, but from a teenager's point of view, that wasn't all bad. The growing wedge between her parents allowed Lani Walker to play both ends against the middle. She was able to get away with things her older brother Davy never could have.
It was during the summer when Lani turned thirteen that the next scandal surfaced concerning Quentin Walker. Still imprisoned at Florence, he was the subject of a new investigation. He was suspected of being involved in a complex protecti
on racket that had its origins inside the prison walls. By the time school started at the end of the summer, a sharp-eyed defense attorney had gotten Quentin off on a technicality, but all of Tucson was abuzz with speculation about Brandon Walker's possible involvement with his son's plot.
The whole mess was just surfacing in the media the week Lani Walker started eighth grade. At home the inflammatory newspaper headlines and television news broadcasts were easy to ignore. All Lani had to do was to skip reading the paper or turn off the TV. At school that strategy didn't work.
"Your father's a crook." Danny Jenkins, the chief bully of Maxwell Junior High, whispered in Lani's ear as the yellow school bus rumbled down the road. "You wait and see. Before long, he'll end up in prison, too, just like his son."
Lani had turned to face her tormentor. Red-haired, rednecked, and pugnacious, Danny had made Lani's life miserable from the moment he had first shown up in Tucson two years earlier after moving there from Mobile, Alabama.
"No, he won't!" Lani hissed furiously.
"Will, too."
"Prove it."
"Why should I? It says so on TV. That means it's true, doesn't it?"
"No, it doesn't, s-koshwa — stupid," she spat back at him. "It just means you're too dumb to turn off the set."
"Wait a minute. What did you call me?"
"Nothing," she muttered.
She turned away, thinking that if she ignored him, that would be the end of it. Instead, he grabbed a handful of her hair and yanked it hard enough that the back of her head bounced off the top of the seat. Tears sprang to her eyes.
"Leave her alone, Danny," Jessica Carpenter ordered. "You're hurting her."
"She called me a name-some shitty Indian name. I want to know what it was."
Lani, with her head pulled tight against the back of the seat, clamped her lips shut. But just because Lani stayed quiet, didn't mean Jessica Carpenter would.
"I'm telling," Jessica yelled. "Driver, driver! Danny Jenkins is pulling Lani's hair."
The driver didn't bother looking over her shoulder. "Knock it off, Danny," she said. "Stop it right now or you're walking."
"But she called me a name," Danny protested. "It sounded bad. Koshi something."
"I don't care what she called you. I said knock it off."
Danny had let go of Lani's hair, but that still wasn't the end of it. "Why don't you go back to the reservation, squaw," he snarled after her as they stepped off the bus. "Why don't you go back to where you belong?"
She turned on him, eyes flashing. "Why don't you?" she demanded. "The Indians were here first."
Nobody liked Danny Jenkins much, although over time his flailing fists had earned him a certain grudging respect. But now, the kids who overheard Lani's retort laughed and applauded.
"You really told him," Jessica said approvingly later on their way to class. "He's such a jerk."
Going home that afternoon, Lani and Jessica chose seats as far from Danny as possible, but after the bus pulled out of the parking lot, he bribed the girl sitting behind Lani to trade places. When Lani and Jessica got off the bus twenty minutes later, they found that a huge wad of bubblegum had been plastered into Lani's hair.
They went into the bathroom at Jessica's house. For an hour, the two of them struggled to comb out the gum, but combing didn't work.
"It's just getting worse," Jessica said finally, giving up. "Let's call your mother. Maybe she'll know what to do."
Lani shook her head. "Mom and Dad have enough to worry about right now. Bring me the scissors."
"Scissors," Jessie echoed. "What are you going to do?"
"Cut it off."
"You can't do that," Jessie protested. "Your hair's so long and pretty…"
"Yes, I can," Lani told her friend determinedly. "And I will. It's my hair."
In the end Jessica helped wield the scissors. She cut the hair off in what was supposed to be a straight line, right at the base of Lani's neck.
"How does it look?" Lani asked as Jessica stepped back to eye her handiwork.
Jessie made a face. "Not that good," she admitted. "It's still a little crooked."
"That's all right," Lani said. "It'll grow out."
"So will mine," Jessie said, handing Lani the scissors.
For a moment, Lani didn't understand. "What do you mean?"
"Cut mine, too. People tease us about being twins. This way, we still will be."
"But what will your mother say?" Lani asked.
"The same thing yours does," Jessica returned.
Fifteen minutes later, Jessie Carpenter's hair was the same ragged length as Lani's. Before they left the bathroom, Lani gathered up all the cuttings into a plastic trash bag. Instead of putting the bag in the garbage, however, she loaded it into her backpack along with her books.
"What are you doing?" Jessica asked.
"I'm going to take it home and use it to make a basket."
"Really? Out of hair?"
Lani nodded. "Nana Dahd showed me once how to make horsehair baskets. This will be an o'othham wopo hashda — people-hair basket."
Hair had been the main topic of conversation that night at both the Walker household and at the Carpenters' just up the road.
"Whatever happened to your hair?" Brandon Walker demanded. "It looks like you got it caught in the paper cutter at school."
"It was too long," Lani answered quietly. "I decided to cut it off. Jessie cut hers, too."
"You cut it yourself?"
Lani shrugged. "Jessie cut mine and I cut hers."
Silenced by a reproving look from Diana, Brandon shook his head and let the subject drop, subsiding into a gloomy silence.
The next day was Saturday. With the enthusiastic approval of Rochelle Carpenter, Jessie's mother, Diana collected both girls and took them to her beauty shop in town to repair the damage.
"You both look much better now," Diana had told them on the way back home. "What I don't understand is why, if you both wanted haircuts, you didn't say something in the first place instead of cutting it off yourselves."
Jessie kept quiet, waiting to see how Lani would answer. "We just decided to, that's all," she said.
Since Lani didn't explain anything more about the fight on the bus, neither did Jessie. As for Diana, she was so accustomed to the vagaries of teenagers that she let the matter drop.
Several weeks later, Lani emerged from her bedroom carrying a small flat disk of a basket about the size of a silver dollar. Diana Ladd had spent thirty years on and around the reservation. Over those years she had become something of an expert on Tohono O'othham basketry and she recognized that her daughter, Rita Antone's star pupil, was especially skilled. As soon as Diana saw this new miniature basket, she immediately recognized the quality of the workmanship in the delicate pale-yellow Papago maze set against a jet-black background.
"I didn't know you ever made baskets like this," Diana said, examining the piece. "Where did you get the horsehair?"
"It's not horsehair," Lani answered. "It's made from Jessie's hair and from mine. I'm making two of them, one for each of us to wear. I'm going to give Jessie hers for her birthday."
Diana looked at her daughter. "Is that why you cut your hair, to make the baskets?"
Lani laughed and shook her head. "No," she said, "I'm making the baskets because we cut our hair."
"Oh," Diana said, although she still wasn't entirely sure what Lani meant.
It was another month before Jessie's maze was finished as well. Each of the baskets had a tiny golden safety pin fastened to the back side. Lani strung a leather thong through each of the pins, tied her necklace around her neck, and then went to Jessica's house carrying the other basket in a tiny white jeweler's box she had begged from Diana.
"It's beautiful," Jessie said, staring down at the necklace. "What does it mean?"
"It means that we're friends," Lani answered. "I made the two baskets just alike so we can still be twins whenever we wear them."
"
I know that we're friends," Jessie giggled. "But the design. What does that mean?"
"It's a sacred symbol," Lani explained. "The man in the maze is I'itoi — Elder Brother. He comes from the center of the earth. The maze spreads out from the center in each of the four directions."
In the years since then, the black-and-gold disk had become something of a talisman for Lani Walker. She called it her kushpo ho'oma — her hair charm. The original leather thong had been replaced several times over. Now when she wore it, the basket dangled from a slender gold chain Lani's parents had given her on the occasion of her sixteenth birthday.
The people-hair charm served as a reminder that some people were good and some were bad. Lani didn't wear it every day, only on special occasions-only when she needed to. There were times when she was nervous or worried about something-as on the day she went to the museum to apply for the job, for instance-that she made sure the necklace went with her.
Having the basket dangling around her neck seemed to give her luck. Every once in a while, she would run her fingertips across the finely woven face of the maze. Just touching the smooth texture seemed to calm her somehow. In a way Lani couldn't quite explain, the tiny basket made her feel more secure-almost as if it summoned Nana Dahd 's spirit back and brought the old basket maker close to her once more.
Coming out of the bathroom with her hair sleek and dry, Lani looked at the clothing she had laid out on a chair the night before-the lushly flowered Western shirt with pearl-covered snaps, a fairly new pair of jeans, shiny boots, and a fawn-colored cowboy hat. Walking past the chair, Lani went to her dresser and opened her jewelry box. She smiled as the first few bars of "When You Wish Upon a Star" tinkled into the room.
Taking her treasured maze necklace from its place of honor, she fastened it around her throat.
Mr. Vega-that was the name the artist had signed in the bottom right-hand corner of the sketch, (M. Vega)-had asked her to wear something Indian. Of all the things Lani Walker owned, her o'othham wopo hashda — people-hair basket-was more purely "Indian" than anything else.
Mr. Vega might not know that, but Lani did, and that's what counted.