Dance of the Bones

Brandon unlocked the back door, switched on the kitchen light, and let Diana inside. “You go on to bed,” he told her. “Bozo and I are going to sit out here and be quiet together for a little while. Being stuck in crowds of -people with all of them talking at once wears me out.”


“Suit yourself,” Diana said. “But if you’re going to be out here very long, turn on your heater, too.”

Flicking the switch, Brandon turned on one of the infrared heat lamps that lined the wooden ceiling of the patio and dropped into one of the chairs. Bozo stood beside him long enough to have his ears rubbed. Then, as if realizing they’d be there for a while, the dog limped back to his bed. He circled twice. With a contented sigh, Bozo lay down to sleep while Brandon leaned back to think.

That was what he needed at the end of a far too social -evening—-a little peace and quiet, with the delicate perfume of orange blossoms drifting on the chilly air.

AFTER LEO LEFT LANI AND Gabe alone on the mountain, the first order of business was to build a fire pit. While Gabe reluctantly set about doing that, Lani unpacked the food and dishes. Once the fire was going, she emptied a bowl of precooked beans into the pot to heat. They were tepary beans, the ones the Tohono O’odham had traditionally grown and used long before the arrival of pinto beans.

The beans in question may have been part of Tohono O’odham’s ancient customs and traditions, but Lani’s manner of transporting them was not. She had loaded them into the backpack inside a sturdy plastic Ziploc container. She realized with some satisfaction, however, that the battered enameled pot she’d brought to heat them was the same one Fat Crack had used to prepare her evening meals during her sixteen--day purification ceremony. The dishes into which she ladled the steaming beans were also the ones she and Fat Crack had used back then.

Tonight she and Fat Crack’s grandson ate their food in a cloud of stubborn silence. When it was over, Lani heated some water and made a hot drink of prickly pear juice and water sweetened with honey.

“I’d rather have a Coke,” Gabe said.

“I’m sure you would,” Lani said mildly, “but sodas aren’t the point of this trip.”

“What is?”

She glanced at the fire. “Do you remember the story of Betraying Woman?” she asked.

“Not really,” Gabe replied.

“You used to know it.”

Gabe shrugged. “So?”

“Then maybe I should remind you.” She told the story then, from beginning to end.

“So that’s what this is about?” Gabe asked sarcastically when she finished telling him the story of Young Man and Betraying Woman. “We’re just going to sit around out here in the middle of nowhere and tell ghost stories all night?”

Lani felt discouraged. This should have been a time when she could give Fat Crack’s grandson the benefit of some of the old man’s wisdom. For years, she had imagined coming here with the boy when he was almost, if not completely, grown, and being able to share the Peace Smoke with him. She had hoped to be able to tell him about her battle with the evil ohb; about how Bat and the spirit of Betraying Woman had aided her in the fight; and about how Fat Crack had helped her deal with the aftermath of that awful day.

That’s what she had always wanted to do, but somehow Gabe had morphed into a difficult young man who had no patience for or interest in the old ways. It saddened Lani to think that perhaps he had drifted completely beyond her reach.

She took a deep breath. “You used to love the I’itoi stories,” Lani pointed out. “When you were little, you used to come to the hospital with me. You liked to visit the patients, especially the old ones. Sometimes you would listen while they told stories, and sometimes you would do the telling.”

“I was little then,” Gabe countered. “I believed in all that crap back then, along with Santa Claus and other stupid stuff that I don’t believe in anymore.”

“Why not?”