Dance of the Bones

Micah, Dan and Lani’s four--year--old son, had been sitting on the floor, happily playing with a set of giant Legos, ones his mother deemed safe to play with because they were too large to be swallowed. Now, sensing tension between his parents, he looked up from his solitary game and gave his mother a beseeching look with his striking azure eyes. “Can I go, too?” he asked.

Brandon Micah Walker--Pardee had been named after Lani’s Anglo adoptive father, Brandon Walker, and after Dan’s grandfather, a full--blooded Apache named Micah Duarte. Part Anglo and part Indian, the boy resembled neither of his parents and was instead a throwback to Dan’s Anglo father. Adam Pardee had been a reasonably good--looking Hollywood stuntman who had eventually murdered Dan’s mother in a frenzied act of domestic violence.

Smiling, Lani reached down, scooped up her dark--haired, blue--eyed boy, and hugged him close. “Most certainly not,” she told him. “You have to stay here and take care of Daddy while Mommy goes with Gabe. We’ll be sleeping outside. The ground will be hard and cold. You need to stay here and sleep in your bed where it’s warm.”

Lani understood that Gabe Ortiz was the real point of contention here. And maybe, just maybe, Dan was slightly jealous of Lani’s close relationship with the boy. Now two months short of his fourteenth birthday, Gabe seemed to have come to a critical fork in the road. The kid, one who had always been amenable to direction and biddable by his elders, had suddenly developed a rebellious streak and morphed into a preteen Tohono O’odham version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Delia and Leo Ortiz, Gabe’s frustrated and worried parents, had turned to Lani for help in steering him away from serious trouble. Since Gabe was the grandson of Lani’s own beloved mentor, Gabe “Fat Crack” Ortiz, she was determined to do whatever she could to fix the problem.

“I stopped by the garage earlier today and talked to Leo about this,” Dan said. “He’s afraid Gabe is a lost cause, and so am I. Leo’s not even sure Gabe will agree to go.”

“He’ll go,” Lani said determinedly. “I’ll see to it that he does. Not going is not an option.”

“Then let me go with you,” Dan said, “please. If I ask Mrs. Hendricks, I’m sure she’d be happy to look after Micah and Angie. I promise, I’ll stay in the background and won’t get in the way of whatever you two need to do.”

Angie was Dan and Lani’s ten--year--old adopted daughter. She was a responsible kid, but she was still far too young to be left in charge of her little brother overnight.

“No,” Lani said firmly, “this is a private transaction between Gabe and me. It has to be just the two of us.”

Dan was inordinately proud of Lani’s role as a physician on the reservation, but he was somewhat less enthusiastic about her status as a traditional medicine woman. Although they had both been raised and educated off the reservation, Lani was the one who seemed to cling to the old ways and honor them, while Dan was more likely to shrug them off.

Still, Dan wouldn’t give up. “But why does it have to be now?” he asked. “It’s still cold as hell out there at night, freezing in fact. Couldn’t all this wait until after it warms up a little?”

“It can’t,” Lani said simply. “The next time we both have the weekend off, it’ll be the middle of May. This has to be done tonight, Dan. Gabe and I will spend the night sharing stories—-I’itoi stories. Tomorrow at midnight it’ll already be the middle of March. After that, it’ll be too late.”

Dan knew then that he was licked. When it came to storytelling, Lani was a strict observer of all applicable rules and rituals. Among the Desert -People, stories were traditionally called “winter--telling tales.” They were to be shared only in the wintertime. That meant they could be told between the middle of November and the middle of March. The rest of the year they were off--limits.