Day of the Dead - J. A. Jance [74]
“He called a meeting on Sunday?” Kath objected. “That’s our one day off together.”
“I’m sorry,” Brian told her. “When the county attorney says jump, grunts like PeeWee and me don’t have much choice but to do it.”
“I love it when elected officials remind us that we’re public servants and need to be treated as such,” Kath grumbled.
Brian Fellows took another drink of milk and then smiled at his wife. “That’s one of the things I love about you, Kath. When I come home from work with tales of woe, I know I’m talking to someone who understands.”
“Right,” she told him. “Now finish your chili. If you’re going to be at Coyote Sitting digging a grave at six tomorrow morning, you need some sleep.”
Kath had the right idea. They went to bed soon after that, but Brian had a hard time falling asleep. When he did, he woke up time and again. He kept having the same dream over and over, one filled with black plastic garbage bags overflowing with bloodied body parts.
Sixteen
Leo Ortiz snored the night away while Delia Ortiz tossed and turned. Years of living in the Anglo world left her ill suited to deal with death in the same undemonstrative way people handled it on the reservation. Leo and Baby Fat Crack had both loved their father and respected him, but they accepted his death with quiet fortitude and dealt with the logistics—getting a casket, making arrangements with a mortuary, and digging the grave—in the same unruffled fashion. Maybe that’s one of the reasons Leo slept so peacefully. He hadn’t been at war with his father. Delia had been. Guilt over the unresolved issues between her and Fat Crack kept Delia wide awake into the wee hours—that and the unrelenting kicking of the restless infant inside her womb.
Wanda Ortiz’s reaction to her husband’s death was much like that of her two sons. It had happened, and now she had things to do. Once the funeral and burial were over, all the attendees would show up at Ban Thak for the customary feast. Considering Fat Crack’s standing in the community, not only as a former tribal chairman but also as the acknowledged siwani—chief medicine man—both events would be widely attended. That required lots of food—and a good deal of organization. There were hundreds of tamales and tortillas to be made; vats of chili and beans to be cooked. To that end, Wanda Ortiz had summoned her daughter from Tucson, her two daughters-in-law, and any other able-bodied female relatives to appear at the family compound the next morning ready for a day’s worth of non-stop cooking.
Before Delia had returned to the reservation seven years earlier, she had never made a single tamale or tortilla. Aunt Julia had tactfully suggested that it might be a good idea for her to learn; Delia had resisted. It reminded her of the fading poster that still hung in the hallway of Ruth’s house outside Cambridge. It showed a photo of Israel’s first and so far only female premier, Golda Meir. The caption under the photo said “But can she type?” That had been Delia’s position as well. As tribal attorney, it didn’t seem necessary for her to know how to make tortillas and tamales. In D.C., the lack of those skills had never been a problem.
She had been annoyed when tribal chairman Gabe Ortiz, at Aunt Julia’s instigation, had shown up on her doorstep to offer unsolicited advice about her personal life. She’d been astonished when he offered her the job of tribal attorney, but she suspected that was only a thinly disguised smoke screen for her interfering auntie’s private agenda—that Delia should dump Philip Cachora and come home to the reservation. Delia had turned the job down cold.
She had fallen hopelessly in love with Philip Cachora, and she was determined to keep him. She had met Philip at the grand opening of a show at the National Gallery, an exhibit of works by what they