Day of the Dead - J. A. Jance [115]
A wave of gentle but approving laughter washed around the room. When it died down, Delia resumed. “Gigh Tahpani was a medicine man. He didn’t really want the job, but he took it. He was careful about it and serious. Over the years he and I had our disagreements, but he was a good man—an honorable man. I will miss him every day from now on.”
To the sound of polite applause, Delia stepped down from the podium. As she returned to her seat, Leo reached out and patted her knee appreciatively. At the same time, Lani Walker stepped up to the lectern. Lani was everything Delia wasn’t right then. Lani was young and slim and lovely. Delia felt old, fat, pregnant, and very, very jealous. What right did Lani have to stand up in public and pretend that she, too, was a member of the Ortiz family?
“My name is Lani Walker. When I was a baby, Wanda Ortiz saved my life. Later, when I was adopted, Gigh Tahpani and Wanda became my godparents.”
Delia had heard the story of the Ant-Bit Child and how Wanda and Gabe Ortiz had helped arrange the baby’s unorthodox adoption when Lani’s own blood relatives, regarding the child as a dangerous object, had refused to take her. No doubt many of the people in the gym that afternoon remembered the story as well, but none of them stirred. They listened with rapt attention.
“Later,” Lani continued, “when I needed a medicine man, Fat Crack stayed beside me during a very difficult time. Like Delia, I’m glad so many people came here today to honor him and, again like Delia, I will miss him forever.”
Delia watched as Lani returned to her seat in the second row, looking poised and lovely and totally at ease. There was nothing Lani had said with which Delia could find fault. She had made no inappropriate claims of kinship, nor had she wallowed in a public display of grief, but the very fact that she had spoken at all still rankled. For a few moments, Delia herself had glimpsed part of what made Lani special—the very thing that Fat Crack had valued about her, and yet…
As applause for Lani’s comments died away and someone else made his way to the lectern, Leo touched Delia’s knee. “Are you all right?” he whispered.
Delia nodded, but for some reason she was unable to speak. In spite of herself, she was beginning to see how her father-in-law had exerted the same kind of influence on Lani’s life as he had on Delia’s. Maybe Lani did have the right to be at the funeral, speaking and grieving. Maybe Delia herself was wrong.
“I’m okay,” she said, but by then she was giving way to tears. As the next speaker began, Delia leaned on Leo’s shoulder and let him comfort her.
“Shhh,” he whispered. “It’s all right.” But Delia wasn’t convinced. She suspected that by shedding tears in public she had let her father-in-law down one last time. With Fat Crack dead, there would be no way for Delia to redress the wrong she had done him.
By the time the mile-long funeral cortege reached the cemetery at Ban Thak, the sun had already dropped behind the crest of Ioligam. People crowded into the dusty cemetery, stumbling over crumbled headstones and crooked crosses and standing on what must have been graves themselves as they strained to hear whatever words the Reverend Moon had to say this time.
After the casket had been lowered into the ground and properly covered with new blankets fresh from JC Penney, the crowd remained transfixed while Leo and Richard helped their mother drop the first shovelful of earth onto the casket. One at a time, each of the children took their separate turns. After that, while the menfolk worked at filling the grave, women and children headed toward the feast house, where the smells of wood smoke from cooking fires filled the warm desert twilight.
With people lining up outside, Wanda took her place at the door to the feast house and offered a short blessing.