by J. A. Jance
Too young to realize what was going on, Diana knew no words for what her father had done to her mother. She had hidden in the closet and waited until it was over, crying and praying that her father would die, that God would strike Max Cooper dead on the spot, but, of course, He hadn’t.
And now, here she was faced with those very words again, and with whatever else came with those words. She squared her shoulders and prepared to fight. Running away hadn’t done her any good if the words had found her anyway, searched her out here in Eugene in her own apartment. Maybe destiny wasn’t something you could escape by running from one end of the state to the other, but she sure as hell didn’t have to go quietly.
“Let me go,” she snapped. “You’re hurting me.”
“Not until you kiss me, Liza.”
Liza! She felt as though he’d slapped her. Who the hell was Liza? An ex-girlfriend maybe? Had Gary Ladd mixed her up with someone else?
“My name’s not Liza. Let me go!”
He smiled and effortlessly pulled her to him until her taut body was against his chest. “Haven’t you ever heard of Liza Doolittle, Liza? She’s a garbageman’s daughter, too, you know. And my name is Henry Higgins, so what are you going to wear to the ball, my dear?”
He kissed her then, quickly, briefly—a brotherly kiss not even a garbageman’s daughter could fault him for—and led her to the closet, where he began rummaging through her clothing, looking for an appropriate dress.
The rush of relief and gratitude that swept over Diana almost brought her to her knees. He hadn’t meant her any harm. It had all been a game, genuine teasing. She wasn’t used to that, and she didn’t know how to handle it.
“Here we are.” He held up the blue taffeta semiformal Diana’s mother had made for her to wear to the prom. “This should do nicely.”
Gathering everything she needed into a bundle, Diana hurried into the bathroom to change, while Garrison Ladd lounged comfortably on her bigger-than-twin-but-less-than-full-sized bed. The idea of him sitting there big as you please made her blush. Her mother had warned her about that, too, about letting men sit on your bed, but then what did her mother know?
As soon as Diana was dressed, they drove to Garrison’s place, a two-bedroom apartment with a pool, emptied now for the winter. He invited her up, but she wasn’t taking any more chances. She stayed in the car while he went inside to change. He came out wearing a tuxedo—his very own tuxedo. Except for Walter Brennan, maybe, no one in Joseph, Oregon, owned his own tuxedo.
They went to the hotel for a dinner of medium-rare steaks, lush salads, and huge baked potatoes complete with sour cream and chives. Feeling like Cinderella, Diana couldn’t help noticing that Garrison Ladd paid more for that single steak dinner than she’d earn from a full week’s worth of work, but that didn’t keep her from enjoying herself.
They laughed at anyone and everyone, including one tearful waitress who acted as though it were inappropriate for anybody to be out on the town having such a gloriously good time with John F. Kennedy not yet in his grave.
Diana Lee Cooper didn’t know when she’d ever had so much fun. She laughed until she cried, and then she laughed some more, and all the while the part of her that had never laughed before was falling more and more in love by the minute.
Finally, at midnight, she’d had enough. “I’ve got to go home and get some sleep,” she announced. “I’ve got newspapers to deliver in the morning.”
“No way,” he told her. “I’m not letting you out of my sight. We’ll stay up all night. When it’s time to deliver your damn newspapers, I’ll help you. How does that sound?”
At five o’clock in the morning, in a driving rain, the two of them delivered the black-banded newspapers that announced President John F. Kennedy’s death. Garrison Ladd drove her around the route in his VW-Bus. Diana, barefoot but still wearing her blue dress, hopped in and out of the bus to send the papers sailing through the air. Gary Ladd was impressed that she never missed a single porch.
Afterward, back in her apartment, cold and wet and still laughing, she let him help her out of her soaked clothes. The wet taffeta was ruined, but Diana didn’t care. She didn’t look at it as he unzipped it and let it slip to the floor in a sodden heap. Nothing mattered except this wonderful man she was with who had the ability to make her laugh and feel beautiful at the same time.
She barely noticed as he unfastened her bra and slipped her garter belt and panties down to the floor. She stepped delicately out of them and stood naked before him while he wrapped his arms around her, holding her close.
“You’re shivering,” he said. He kissed her once, a long, lingering kiss, and she responded eagerly. Playfully, he nibbled at her ear. It tickled, and she giggled, but then she caught herself. She realized what was happening and tried to pull away.
“Don’t tease me,” he whimpered urgently. “Please don’t tease me.”
She closed her eyes and let herself melt against him while the room whirled around her. She tried to block out the sickening memory of her father’s drunken voice, but it was all there again in her mind, not only the night she’d spent in the closet but also that other terrible long-ago night after the first pre-rodeo dance.
A few of the boys took her out behind the school and offered to show her exactly what she’d have to do to win. They told her that any girl who came from the wrong side of the tracks wasn’t going to make it to the top any other way. Somehow she escaped them. She ran all the way home, arriving in tears with her clothes half torn off.
And just when she got inside, closing the door behind her, just when she thought she was safe, Max Cooper materialized behind her and switched on the light. Drunk, he was enraged when he saw her clothes. “Slut!” he shouted. “You worthless, no-good slut! What the hell have you been up to?”
Desperate to get away, she darted past him up the stairs. The booze slowed him down, and she got away clean, but Max plowed up the stairs after her. Upstairs, she locked herself in the bathroom and was sick, vomiting into the toilet. He banged on the door a couple of times. She heard him distantly, over the sound of her own retching. At least he didn’t break the door down. The wooden door kept his fists at bay, but his words found their mark all the same.
“You’re a bitch, Diana Lee Cooper! A no-good bitch of a prick-tease!”
She was washing her face by then, staring at her ashen face in the bathroom mirror. She wouldn’t be that, she vowed into the mirror. No matter what he called her, no matter what it was, she wouldn’t ever be that.
“What did you say?” she asked vaguely.
She stood with her head thrown back, her wet hair dripping on the floor behind her. Without her being aware of it, Garrison Ladd had kissed his way down her yielding neck and across the gentle swell of her breast. He closed his lips around one delicate, upright nipple. She moaned with pleasure as wild sensation shot through her body.
Reluctantly, he let the nipple go. Straightening up, he crushed her against him while his breath came in short, harsh gasps. Through the confines of his trousers, she could feel his urgent hardness straining against her. She pulled back from him again for a moment, far enough away to look up at his face and see the blazing intensity in his eyes.
That was when the second realization hit her—Garrison Ladd wanted her. Diana Lee Cooper was stunned by the unbridled passion in his wanting. How had she allowed it to happen? How had she let him go this far? Because it was too far—too late to tell him no, too late to make him stop. She remembered the promise she’d made, a sacred vow spoken to the frightened face of a girl reflected back in a pockmarked bathroom mirror while her father pounded on the door. There could be no turning back.
She reached up with both hands and pulled Garrison Ladd’s face down until his lips once more grazed hers.
“I won’t tease you,” she whispered fiercely. “Not ever.”
And she kept her word.
8
IT IS SAID that from then on the people were very jea
lous of Little Bear and Little Lion. They wanted the boys’ beautiful birds to use the feathers on their own arrows. One night the boys’ grandmother warned them, “Tomorrow the people will come here. They will kill me and try to steal your birds. You must take the birds far away from here and throw them off the mountains in the east.”
The next morning, it happened just as she said. The people came to the house and killed Wise Old Grandmother, but Little Bear and Little Lion escaped, taking their beautiful birds with them. Back then, the people had not yet lost the ability to follow tracks, so they followed the two boys across the desert.
As Little Bear and Little Lion started up the far mountain, they heard the angry people close behind them. Little Bear was too tired to go on. “Here,” he said to his brother. “You take my bird as well. I will wait here for the people. They may kill me, but at least the birds will be free.”
And that is what happened. Little Bear kept the people with him long enough for Little Lion to throw the beautiful birds with their multicolored feathers off the mountain. And that, nawoj, is the story of how Sunrise and Sunset got their colors.
They say a certain type of criminal always returns to the scene of his crime, and Andrew Carlisle fit that mold. He was curious. He wanted to know if anyone had discovered Margaret Danielson’s body yet; not that he would actually have gone up the mountain to see for himself, but he couldn’t resist pulling off into the rest area at Picacho Peak since it was on his way. He was rewarded by the collection of law-enforcement vehicles parked haphazardly around the picnic and playground area, which told him what he needed to know.
The highway patrol had cordoned off almost half the rest area, but a few tables were still available. He took his Thermos to one of those and settled down to watch the fun, which included several milling television cameramen, some reporters, and a few stray newspaper photographers.
“What’s going on?” Andrew asked a man who came by lugging a huge television-equipment suitcase.
“An Indian killed a woman up there on the mountain,” the guy said. “They’re just now bringing the body down.”
An Indian? Carlisle thought. No kidding. They think an Indian did it? He couldn’t believe this stroke of luck. For the second time in as many chances, fate had handed over the perfect fall guy for something Carlisle himself had done, someone to take the blame. Sure, he’d gone to prison for Gina Antone, mostly because the cops thought he’d driven the truck that had inadvertently broken her neck. They had never suspected the real truth, not even that wise-ass of a detective, because if they had, it would have been a whole lot worse. Now, here he was again with somebody else all lined up to take the rap.
One thing did worry him a little. It hadn’t taken long for the cops to find her. He hadn’t expected them to work quite this fast, but he was prepared for it anyway. He was glad now that he’d taken the time to clean the bits of his flesh from under her fingernails. With something like that, you couldn’t be too careful. His mentors in Florence had warned him not to underestimate cops. The crooked ones had a price—all you had to do was name it. Straight ones you had to look out for, the ones who were too dumb to take you up on it when you made them an offer they shouldn’t refuse.
“Mom, if Rita dies, will we put a cross on the road where she wrecked the truck?”
They had just driven by the Kitt Peak turnoff on their way to Sells. With all the emergency vehicles gone, there was no sign of the almost-fatal accident the previous afternoon.
“Probably,” Diana answered, “but Rita isn’t going to die. I talked to her sister this morning. She’ll be fine.”
“Does my daddy have a cross?”
The abrupt change of subject caused Diana to swing her eyes in her son’s direction. The car almost veered off the road, but she caught it in time. “Why do you ask that?”
“Well, does he?”
“I suppose. At the cemetery. In Chicago.”
“Have I ever been there?”
“No.”
“Is that where he died?”
“No. Why are you asking all these questions?” Diana’s answer was curt, her question exasperated.
“Did you know Rita puts a new wreath and a candle at the place where Gina died? She does that every year. Why don’t we?”
“It’s an Indian custom,” Diana explained. “Papago custom. Your father wasn’t a Papago.”
“I thought you said I was going to turn into an Indian.”
“I was kidding.”
Davy fell silent for several miles, and his mother was relieved that the subject seemed closed. “Did you ever kill anything, Mom?” he asked at last. “Besides the snake, I mean.”
Jesus! She had almost forgotten about the snake. It was two years now since the afternoon she was inside and heard Bone barking frantically out in the yard. Alarmed, she hurried out to check.
She found all three of them—boy, dog, and snake—mutually trapped in the small area between the side of the house and the high patio wall. The rattlesnake, a fat four-footer, had been caught out in the open sunning itself.
It’s said that the first person can walk past a sleeping rattlesnake but a second one can’t. Davy had walked past the drowsing snake unharmed and was now cornered on the rattler’s far side. Bone, barking himself into a frenzy, was smart enough not to attempt darting past the now-coiled and angry snake.
Diana Ladd was usually scared witless of snakes. As a mother, this was her first experience in dealing with a life-or-death threat to her child. Instantly, she became a tigress defending her young.
“Don’t move, Davy!” she ordered calmly, without raising her voice. “Stand right there and don’t you move!”
She raced back to the garage and returned with a hoe, the only weapon that fell readily to hand. She had a gun inside the house, a fully loaded Colt .45 Peacemaker, but she didn’t trust herself with that, especially not with both Davy and the dog a few short feet away.
She had attacked the snake with savage fury and severed its head with two death-dealing blows. Only after it was over and Davy was safely cradled in her arms did she give way to the equally debilitating emotions of fear and relief.
“How come your face’s all white, Mom?” Davy had asked. “You look funny. Your lips are white, and so’s your skin.”
“Well?” Davy prompted once more, jarring Diana out of her reverie. “Did you?”
“Did I what?”
“Ever kill anything besides the snake?”
“No,” she said. “So help me God, I never did.”
As the sun rose above her hospital room window, Rita’s life passed by in drowsing review.
Traveling Sickness came to Ban Thak the year Dancing Quail was eight and again away at school. The sickness crept into the village with a returning soldier, and many people fell ill, including all of Dancing Quail’s family, from her grandmother right down to little S-kehegaj.
Desperately ill herself, but somewhat less so than the others, Understanding Woman sent word to the outing matron asking that Dancing Quail be brought home from Phoenix to help. Understanding Woman also sent for a blind medicine man from Many Dogs village, a man whose name was S-ab Neid Pi Has, which means Looks At Nothing.
At fifteen, Looks At Nothing left home to work in Ajo’s copper mines. Two years later, he was blinded by a severe blow to the head during a drunken brawl in Ajo’s Indian encampment. The other Indian died. Looks At Nothing, broken in body and spirit both, returned home to Many Dogs Village. The old medicine man there diagnosed his ailment as Whore-Sickness, which comes from succumbing to the enticing temptations of dreams, and which causes ailments of the eyes.
First Looks At Nothing was treated with ritual dolls. When that didn’t work, singers were called in who were good with Whore-Sickness. For four days, the singers smoked their sacred tobacco and sang their Whore-Sickness songs. When the singing was over, Looks At Nothing was still blind, but during the healing process he came to see that his life had a purpose. I’itoi had s
ummoned him home, demanding that the young man turn his back on the white man’s ways and return to the traditions of his father and grandfathers before him. In exchange, I’itoi promised, Looks At Nothing would become a powerful shaman.
By the time Understanding Woman summoned him to Ban Thak, Looks At Nothing, although still very young, was already reputed to be a good singer for curing Traveling Sickness. He came to Coyote Sitting, sang his songs, and smoked his tobacco, but unfortunately, he arrived too late. Dancing Quail’s parents died, but he did manage to cure both Understanding Woman and Little Pretty One. Looks At Nothing was still there singing when Big Eddie Lopez, dispatched by the outing matron, brought Dancing Quail home from Phoenix.
Riding to Chuk Shon inside the train rather than on it, Dancing Quail was sick with grief. With both her parents dead, what would happen if she had to live without her grandmother and her baby sister, too?
Soon, however, it was clear that Understanding Woman and Pretty One would recover. Dancing Quail was dispatched to pay Looks At Nothing his customary fee, which consisted of a finely woven medicine basket—medicine baskets were Understanding Woman’s specialty—and a narrow-necked olla with several dogs representing Many Dogs Village carefully etched into the side.
Dancing Quail approached the medicine man shyly as he gathered up his remaining tobacco and placed it in the leather pouch fastened around his waist. At the sound of her footsteps, he stopped what he was doing. “Who is it?” he asked, while his strange, sightless eyes stared far beyond her.
“Hejel Wi’ikam,” she answered. “Orphaned Child. I have brought you your gifts.”
Looks At Nothing motioned for her to sit beside him. First she gave him the basket, then the olla. His sensitive fingers explored each seam and crevice. “Your grandmother does fine work,” he said at last.