by J. A. Jance
When Great Spirit went south, Gopher—Jewho—and Coyote—Ban—followed him because, as you remember, everything must follow the Spirit of Goodness. And while I’itoi was digging into the side of the hill to show the Hiakim how to build their houses, Gopher and Coyote stood watching. And soon, Jewho and Ban began digging as well. Every minute or two, as they worked, they pulled their heads out of the holes they were digging to see how Elder Brother did it.
Presently I’itoi stopped to rest. When he saw what Gopher and Coyote were doing, he laughed and said, “That is a good house for you.” And that, nawoj, is why the gophers and coyotes have lived that same way ever since.
Moments after Lani stepped into the house, the phone rang. “Davy!” she exclaimed, her voice alive with delight as soon as she heard her brother’s greeting. “Where are you? When will you be home?”
“I’ll be leaving Evanston tomorrow morning,” he said. “I won’t be home until sometime next week.”
“In time for Mom and Dad’s anniversary?” she asked.
“What day is it again?” David asked.
“Saturday,” she told him. “A week from tomorrow.”
“I should be there by then. Why? Is there a party or something?”
“No, but wait until you see what I’m getting them. There’s a guy I met on the way to work. He’s an artist. I’m going to pose for him tomorrow morning, and he’s going to give me a picture.”
“What kind of pose?” David asked.
“He wants me to wear something Indian,” Lani said. “I’m going to wear the outfit I wore for rodeo last year.”
“Oh,” David Ladd said, sounding relieved. “That kind of pose.”
“What kind of pose did you think?” Lani asked.
“Never mind. Is Mom there?”
“She’s outside with Dad. Want me to go get her?”
“Don’t bother. Just give her the message that I’m leaving in the morning, so she won’t be able to reach me. Tell her I’ll call from here and there along the way to let her know how I’m doing.”
From the moment Lani had come to the house in Gates Pass, Davy Ladd had been the second most important person in her young life, right behind Nana Dahd. The bond that existed between the two went far beyond the normal connection between brother and sister. Even halfway across the continent Lani sensed something was amiss.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
David Ladd was more than a little concerned about driving cross-country alone. Under normal circumstances, it wouldn’t have bothered him at all. In the course of his years of going to school at Northwestern, he had made the solo drive several times. Now, though, he was living with the possibility of another panic attack always hanging over his head. What would happen if one came over him while he was driving alone down a freeway? He had called home, looking for reassurance, but obviously the edginess in his tone had communicated itself to his little sister. That embarrassed him.
“It’s no big deal,” he said. “I’ve just been having some trouble sleeping is all.”
Lani laughed. “You? Mom always said you were the world-class sleeper in the family, that you could sleep through anything.”
“Not anymore,” Davy replied somberly. “I guess I must be getting old.” He paused. “So are things all right at home? With Mom and Dad, I mean?”
“Sure,” Lani said. “Mom’s getting ready to start another book, and Dad’s still cutting up wood like mad.”
“And how about you?” Davy added. “How are things going with the new job?”
“It’s great,” Lani answered. “There’s that hour in the morning, between shifts . . .” She stopped. “Hey, maybe when you’re back here, you could come over to the museum in the afternoons sometimes. I can get you in for free. The two of us could spend the afternoon there together, just like we used to, with Nana Dahd.”
“I’d like that, Mualig Siakam,” David Ladd said softly, drifting back into the world of their childhood names and squeezing the words out over an unexpected lump that suddenly rose in his throat. “I’d like that a lot.”
“Mr. Walker?”
Quentin Walker, slouched in front of a beer on his customary stool, was drinking his way toward the end of Happy Hour at El Gato Loco, a dive of a workingman’s bar just east of the freeway on West Grant Road in Tucson. At the sound of his own name, one Quentin didn’t necessarily bandy about among the tough customers of El Gato, Quentin swung around on his stool and studied the newcomer over the rim of his draft beer.
“Yeah,” he said without enthusiasm. “That’s me.”
“Long time no see.”
Quentin was more than moderately drunk. He had been sitting at the smoke-filled bar since five, working his way through his usual TGIF routine—shots of bourbon with beer chasers. He squinted up at the newcomer, a tall, spare man who, even in the shadowy gloom of the nighttime bar, still wore sunglasses and a baseball cap pulled low on his forehead. Only when the man finally reached up and removed the sunglasses did recognition finally dawn.
“Why, Mitch Johnson!” Quentin exclaimed. “How the hell are you?”
“I’m out, same as you,” Mitch answered with a grin as he settled on the next stool. “Which means I’m fine. You?”
Quentin shrugged. “Okay, I guess. What’ll you have to drink?”
“A beer,” Mitch said. “Bud’s okay.”
Quentin signaled the bartender, who brought two beers and another shot as well. When Mitch paid for all three drinks, Quentin nodded his thanks. He hadn’t really planned on another. By the time Happy Hour finished at seven, he was usually juiced enough that he could stagger the three blocks up the street to his grubby apartment. There, if he was lucky and drunk enough both, he’d fall into bed and sleep through the night. Maybe it was just the geography of it, of being back so near to where it had all happened. Whatever the cause, in the months since he’d left prison and returned to Tucson, sleep without the benefit of booze was a virtual impossibility. He went to bed more or less drunk every night. That was the only thing that held his particular set of demons at bay.
“I heard about Andy,” Quentin said. “Read about it in the paper, that he died, I mean. It’s too bad . . .”
“I’m sure he was more than ready to go,” Mitch replied. “He’d been sick for a long time. He was in a lot of pain. I think he had suffered enough.”
Quentin cast a bleary, questioning stare at the man seated next to him. Mitch had seen that look before and understood it. He had seen it on the faces of countless guards and fellow prisoners. They were all searching his face for signs of the awful lesions that had made Andrew Carlisle’s grotesque face that much worse toward the end. Everyone was waiting to see when the same visible marks of AIDS—symptoms of his impending death—would show up on Mitch’s body as well. For all of them—guards and prisoners alike—it was a foregone conclusion that the telltale marks of Kaposi’s sarcoma would inevitably appear.
Mitch alone knew that those conclusions were wrong. He and Andy Carlisle had been cell mates and friends for seven and a half celibate years. Although the rest of the prison population may have thought otherwise, their relationship had been intellectual rather than sexual. Originally there had been some of the trappings of teacher and student, but eventually that had evolved into one of fully equal co-conspirators—with the two of them aligned against the universe.
Their long-term interdependence and mutual interests had merged into a closeness that, outside prison, might well have been mistaken for a kind of love. And in a way, it was. It had been a private joke between them that the universal presumption of physical intimacy between them had given Mitch Johnson a certain kind of protection from attack that he had very much appreciated. Originally that physical security had meant far more to Mitch than Andrew Carlisle’s promised monetary legacy. Once the former professor was in the picture, no one ever again attempted to mess with Mitch Johnson, no one at all.
“Believe it or not, still no symptoms, if that
’s what you’re looking for,” Mitch said, answering Quentin’s unasked question.
Embarrassed, Quentin’s eyes dodged away from Mitch’s unflinching gaze. “Sorry,” he mumbled.
“It’s okay,” Mitch said.
For a time the two men were silent while Quentin stared moodily into his beer. “I didn’t mean to insult you . . .”
“Forget it,” Mitch said. “It’s nothing. I’m used to it by now.”
Quentin shook his head. “You two were the only ones up there who ever helped me, you know,” he muttered. “You and Andy. And of all the people there, you two should have been the very last ones. I mean, with everything my family did to you . . .”
“It’s all water under the bridge, Quentin,” Mitch reassured him. “That was then, and this is now.”
“But you don’t know how bad it was for me,” Quentin continued, undeterred. “That first year after I got sent up was a nightmare. I was young and stupid and the son of a sheriff, for God’s sake, and I thought I was so tough. But I wasn’t, not nearly tough enough. Everybody in the joint was after my ass, or worse. Those guys had me six ways to Sunday. They turned me into nothing but a piece of meat.” He shuddered, remembering.
“If you and Andy hadn’t taken me under your wings, I don’t know what would have happened to me. I’d probably be dead by now.”
“Don’t give me any of the credit,” Mitch cautioned. “It was Andy’s idea, not mine.”
“But why did he do it? I’ve always wondered about that. All he had to do was put out the word that I belonged to him and that was it. After that nobody else ever touched me. I was scared shitless that he would . . . that someday he’d make a demand and I’d have to come across, but he never did.”
“No,” Mitch agreed. “Andy wasn’t like that. That’s the part nobody understood about him.”
“Not even with you?” Quentin asked.
“No, not even with me.”
“So why then?” Quentin continued. “Why did he protect me without demanding anything in return?”
“Because that’s the way he was,” Mitch answered. “Because Andrew Carlisle was a remarkable man.”
“It’s the nicest thing anybody ever did for me.” Quentin Walker’s blood alcohol level had taken him to the edge of maudlin. He ducked his head and swiped tears from his eyes.
Mitch looked away and pretended not to notice. “He helped me the same way he did you,” he said quietly. “He taught me how to survive, no matter what. In the end, he was the one who gave me a reason to go on living.”
“Hell of a guy,” Quentin murmured, raising his beer glass in a toast. “Here’s to Andy. May he rest in peace.”
Again they were both silent for a moment. “I suppose you’ve read your stepmother’s book about him?” Mitch said finally.
Quentin Walker scowled into his glass. “Are you kidding? Whatever that bitch has to say about him, I’m not interested. Just because she had a problem with Andrew Carlisle doesn’t mean I did, too.”
Mitch clicked his tongue. “Your stepmother may be famous, but it doesn’t sound as though she’s one of your favorite people.”
Quentin shook his head. “Are you kidding? She’s got my dad wound so tight around her little finger, it’s a wonder the man can even breathe on his own.”
“One of those blended families that isn’t quite working,” Mitch Johnson observed.
Quentin Walker had come back to Tucson from prison to a kind of internal exile. He was right there in town with them, but he wanted nothing whatever to do with Brandon Walker and his “second” family. He had seen his mother a few times, but the second time he hit Janie Walker Fellows Hitchcock up for a loan, Quentin’s goody-goody half-brother, Brian Fellows, had barred the door. Now Quentin was only allowed to speak to his mother in person and in the presence of either her nurse or of Brian himself.
Working construction, Quentin had developed a reputation as a loner. He caught rides to and from work with various coworkers, but having discovered how people reacted to the news that he was fresh out of the slammer, he now kept that information strictly to himself. He resisted all suggestions of possible friendship and relied on various neighborhood bartenders when he needed a shoulder to cry on.
In all those lonely months, Mitch Johnson’s was the first truly friendly face he had encountered. Here at last was someone who, however distant, qualified as a friend; someone who could be counted on to understand the depths of Quentin’s own miserable existence. Here was a kindred spirit, an ex-con himself, who didn’t automatically regard Quentin as some kind of repulsive monster. Grateful beyond measure, the younger man warmed to this prison acquaintance in the same boozy way he might have approached an old classmate at a high school reunion.
For months, for years, in fact, Quentin had kept his feelings locked behind a dam of self-pity. Now, as the floodgates opened, he spilled out his sad tale, wallowing in the injustice of it all.
“Tommy and me didn’t get blended,” Quentin replied bitterly. “Sliced and diced is more like it. Or else pureed right out of existence.”
“Tommy’s your brother then?” Mitch Johnson asked.
Quentin considered for a moment before he answered. “He was my little brother. The two of us always ended up taking a backseat to Davy, my stepmother’s kid, and even to Lani, once she came along. They got everything, and we got nothing.”
“Lani’s the Indian girl your dad and stepmother adopted?”
Quentin frowned. “How did you know that?”
“It’s in the book,” Mitch said quickly. “In your stepmother’s book. You’re all in it. You said Tommy was your little brother. I don’t remember the book saying anything about him being dead.”
“Tommy’s missing,” Quentin answered firmly. “He’s been missing for years. He disappeared between his freshman and sophomore years in high school. After all this time, I suppose he’s dead. Nobody’s heard from him since.”
Quentin ducked his head and took another quick sip of beer. “Sorry,” he added. “I didn’t mean to end up spilling out all this family crap.”
“It’s okay,” Mitch returned. “Families are like that, especially for people like us. All you have to do is screw up once and then you find out the whole idea of ‘unconditional love’ is a crock of shit. The people who are supposed to love you usually turn out to be the ones who break your heart. That’s why friends are so important. A lot of times, friends are it. They’re all you end up with.”
Once again Quentin gave Mitch a searching, sidelong look. “You mean you’re in the same boat?”
Mitch nodded. “Pretty much,” he said. “If it’s any consolation, there’s a whole lot of that going around.”
“As in misery loves company?”
“More or less.”
Quentin gave a bleak laugh and lifted his almost empty glass. “Here’s to friends, then,” he said.
“To friends,” Mitch agreed, touching his still almost full glass to Quentin’s nearly empty one. Quentin raised one finger and called for another beer.
“So what are you up to these days?” Quentin asked as they waited for the bartender to deliver the order.
“For the last couple of months,” Mitch Johnson said quietly, “I’ve been looking for you.”
“Looking for me?” Quentin asked, as though he couldn’t quite believe it.
Mitch nodded. “I probably wouldn’t have found you now if it hadn’t been for your mother.”
“Which one, my stepmother or my real mother?”
“Your biological mother,” Mitch answered.
“You mean you actually made it past the screen and talked to her?”
“What screen?”
“My brother, Brian. My half-brother. He doesn’t let me anywhere near Mom if he can help it. He claims I upset her. What he really means is she might end up slipping me some cash. Brian wants to keep all that for himself.”
“Your brother must not have been home,” Mitch replied, “because I ta
lked to her directly. She’s the one who told me where you were living.”
“You still haven’t told me how come you were looking for me in the first place.”
“Andy told me once that you claimed to have found some pottery—some Indian pottery—out on the reservation. Is that true?”
Quentin had been chatting easily enough. Now, though, he pulled back. “What if it is?” he asked.
Mitch ignored the sudden shift in mood. “One of the things Andy did for me before he died,” Mitch continued, “was to give me the benefit of some of his contacts. I may have found a possible buyer for those pots of yours—if they’re legit, that is.”
The conversation ground to a momentary halt. “How much money?” Quentin asked finally, looking up.
Mitch shrugged. “That depends on quality and quantity of the merchandise, of course. But before my buyer will deal on any pots, he wants me to take a look at them. He wants me to see the pots as well as where you found them.”
Before Mitch could even finish the sentence, Quentin Walker was already shaking his head. “No way!” he said. “No way in hell! I can maybe bring them out for you to see them, but you can’t go there to look at them. It’s not possible.”
“Why not?”
“You just can’t, that’s all.”
“But I can make it worth your while,” Mitch said.
Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out his wallet. He removed several bills and laid them on the bar. “Believe me, Quentin, there’s a lot more where this came from. It’s our chance to make some big bucks.”
Quentin looked at the money blankly for some time, as though lost in thought. “What’s this?” he asked at last.
“What does it look like?” Mitch Johnson smiled. “It’s a small down payment, Quentin. But remember, seeing the material on site is part of the deal. This is the first half. You get the same amount as soon as you show me the spot. After that, it’s a sixty-forty split of whatever my buyer pays.”
Mitch knew very well the kind of hand-to-mouth existence Quentin Walker had lived since being released from prison. He had expected the man to leap at the opportunity to make some fast money. Mitch found Quentin’s apparent reticence somewhat surprising. He waited impatiently while the younger man stared down at the bills without touching them.