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Delia Cachora Ortiz, hands on her sturdy hips, glared at her son. “You won’t freeze, and yes, you have to go. As for why? Because I said so.”
As tribal chairman, Delia Ortiz wielded a good deal of influence all over the vast Tohono O’odham Nation. Her husband, Leo, was on the tribal council—a representative from the Sells District. The respect Gabe and Delia were shown outside their home didn’t necessarily carry over into what went on inside. Delia knew she bore most of the responsibility for what had happened. Gabe was an only child. She had coddled him, spoiled him. For a time, that hadn’t mattered, but once he turned twelve, it seemed as though someone had flipped a switch. Up till then, the boy, named in honor of his grandfather, Gabe “Fat Crack” Ortiz, had always been an excellent student and a good kid. Now his grades had fallen through the floor, and he was palling around with a bad bunch of kids.
Delia and Leo had tried their best to warn Gabe that he was headed for trouble. They had reasoned with him, threatened, and cajoled until they were blue in the face, but nothing they said had the least effect. As a last resort, they had turned to Lani for help, hoping she could somehow work a miracle. The geographical cure she suggested wasn’t at all what Delia and Leo had expected. Packing the boy off to what amounted to a boarding-school situation in Tucson sounded like a last resort, but it would be better than his ending up in juvie.
That was what tonight was all about. Lani was determined to take Gabe into the desert and try to convince him to turn his life around. His parents’ other option to help him avoid juvie was to send him to live with Delia’s mother and attend school on the East Coast. Leo had told his wife straight out that he didn’t believe having Lani Walker-Pardee “shake a few feathers” at the boy would do the least bit of good, but Delia was desperate, and a dose of Lani’s medicine-woman treatment was their last hope.
“Put down that game, get off your butt, and pack up,” Delia ordered. “You’ll need a coat, a scarf, and probably some extra pairs of socks.”
“You expect me to stay out all night in this weather?” Gabe grumbled. “How’s that possible? I don’t even have a sleeping bag.”
“You won’t need a sleeping bag,” Delia countered. “Your dad got out a couple of his father’s wool blankets for you to use.”
The several colorful and tightly woven Navajo blankets that had once belonged to Fat Crack Ortiz were now among Leo Ortiz’s most prized possessions. The garage and towing company that had once belonged to Fat Crack had been left to both his sons, Leo and Richard. Over time, Leo had bought out Richard’s share of the business. The blankets, though, had been his alone from the begi
“Great,” Gabe sneered. “Those scratchy old things? I’d rather freeze.”
“Suit yourself then,” his mother told him angrily. “That’s totally up to you.”
CHAPTER 2
FOR A LONG TIME AFTER I’itoi, the Spirit of Goodness, who is sometimes called Elder Brother, made everything and set Tash on his path across the sky, the days were warm and bright, and every day was just the same. That was good for making corn—huhni—and wheat—pilkani—grow and ripen in the fields, but sometimes the nights in the desert were very cold.
The People thought about this and decided that it would be nice to have heat whenever they wanted it. They tried to ask I’itoi about it, but Elder Brother was too busy, so the Tohono O’odham decided they must help themselves. They held a council and decided what to do. This is how Fire—Tai—was brought from Tash—Sun.
Early one morning, before Tash started his jumps across the sky, Old Woman—O’oks—was sent with a burden basket—gihwo—to get some of Sun’s heat so the people could have some of its warmth. O’oks went very fast, but even so she was far too slow. By the time she reached the East—Si’al—where Tash makes his home, Sun was already far into that day’s journey. He was very high in the sky by then and also very hot. When O’oks came home with her burden basket empty, the People asked her to go again, but she refused. The Tohono O’odham shrugged and said that O’oks was too old and slow, and so they sent Boy—Cheoj. When Boy returned, he said that when he was almost there, Tash was so hot that he could not see, and so he, too, had come back empty-handed.
The People thought that this was just another excuse, but they decided that they would wait until the end of Sun’s journey, because they wanted the heat for the night. This time they sent Kelimai—Old Man, an elder. Old Man ran all day to get to the place where Tash stays at night. When he came back the next day, he did not have any heat. He said that at the end of the day Tash jumped into a big hole, and that the Desert People would have to send Thah O’odham, the Flying People.
Next the People asked Moth. Hu’ul-nahgi went to the house of Sun, which, as you know, nawoj, my friend, is in the East on the far side of the Earth. Moth told Sun how sorry the Indians were and how much they needed Tash to return so they could grow their seeds and have food to eat.
By this time Sun was well, and he was no longer so angry. He agreed to return. But Moth was worried. He asked Sun if he could please walk farther away from the earth so it would not be so hot and make everything dry up.
Sun thought about that and then he agreed. He said that on his first jump in the morning, he would have his niece go with him and kick a ball of red dust to keep the earth from becoming too hot. He said that in the late afternoon, he would have his nephew come along and kick a red ball of dust to make the evenings cooler.
And that is why, nawoj, my friend, even to this day we have red clouds at sunrise and sunset, because of those red balls of dust.
BRANDON WALKER HANDED OVER HIS drink ticket and put a buck in the bartender’s tip glass. Then, taking his clear plastic cup of red wine—Turkey Creek merlot—he made his way through the University of Arizona bookstore teeming with the noisy chatter of enthusiastic partygoers. He found himself a quiet corner where he could be out of sight while still keeping an eye on the proceedings around him and also on the group of adoring fans clustered around his wife. Fame seemed to follow Diana Ladd wherever she went, and it was easier for Brandon to keep watch from a distance than it was to be constantly elbowed out of the way.
This cattle-call gathering in the bookstore on Friday evening marked the opening event for that year’s Tucson Festival of Books. The reception came first, followed immediately by the Authors’ Di
The critics had raved about it: “Ladd’s lyrical prose transcends the whole idea of scholarly biography and brings a tragic American icon to life on the page.”