Dance of the Bones

AFTER GABE LEFT, LANI SAT by the fire for hours, wrapped in her bedroll and gradually feeding the remaining pieces of wood into the flames. Her work as an ER physician meant that she was accustomed to working odd hours, especially nighttime hours. So she didn’t try to sleep. Instead, she stayed awake, thinking. For a while she let herself meander through the old stories, the ones she had learned from Nana Dahd and from Fat Crack. And since Gabe wasn’t present to hear them, she told them to herself—-the story of Bat bringing fire as well as the story of Beautiful Girl who would eventually become Evening Star.

Finally, though, her thoughts drifted to Gabe. She wandered through her collection of memories about him, remembering the things about him that had endeared him to her as a child, starting with the night he was born.

Lani and Delia Cachora hadn’t exactly been friends back then. When Delia first arrived back on the reservation, the fact that Fat Crack had chosen, doted on, and mentored both of them had caused an odd kind of sibling rivalry to grow between the two young women. They were still wary of each other at the time of Fat Crack’s death.

On the day of his funeral, after the nightlong feast in the village of Ban Thak—-Coyote Sitting—-Delia’s water had broken. Lani was still in medical school, but she had realized at once that the baby was coming too fast to make it to the hospital before he was born. That was how Gabe Ortiz became the first baby Lani Walker ever delivered, turning the backseat of Diana Ladd’s fully restored Buick Invicta into a makeshift delivery room.

Wanda Ortiz, Fat Crack’s widow and the baby’s grandmother, had taken the squalling child and dried him on clean towels from the feast house. Then, after wrapping him in one of his father’s immense flannel shirts, she had handed him to Lani, who had in turn passed him along to Delia.

Lani still remembered how she had felt in that moment. The baby was a gift through time. He had been passed down from Nana Dahd’s grandmother, Understanding Woman, to the next generation, to Rita Antone and Looks at Nothing. They had passed the gift on to Rita’s nephew, Fat Crack, who had done the same, passing the baby along to the next generation—-Lani and Delia. It had seemed to Lani then, and still did, that the Elders, Kekelimai, had entrusted the care and keeping of this precious child to new hands, with the expectation—-the requirement—-that he be kept safe.

Gabe had just turned eight when Lani first became aware of how different the little boy was. Lani’s mother had been dealing with some health issues, and the mental symptoms had been far more troubling than the physical ones. Although Lani and her father never came right out and discussed the situation, they were both convinced that Diana was losing it—-that she was drifting into some kind of dementia situation or perhaps starting down the slippery slope into early--onset Alzheimer’s.

The real culprit had been a simple matter of adverse drug interactions, but it was Gabe who had helped Lani understand that Diana was having hallucinations—-that she was carrying on long heart--to--heart chats with Andrew Philip Carlisle, the crazed convicted killer who had once tried to murder her and who also happened to be dead. Lani’s dad had always credited her medical skills with sorting out Diana’s situation, but Lani herself knew that it was Gabe—-born long after Carlisle had gone to what she hoped was his just reward—-who had brought the matter to her attention.