Hawk Moon (12 page)

As she prepared an espresso and a chocolate cone, Will thought about Jerry Wharton again. Jerry and Taylor. That was it. Myra had told him that Jerry had been going out with Taylor this past summer. There was something else, too. He thought back to an evening earlier in the fall when he and Myra had been on their way to a movie.

She'd said that Wharton had hung around the shop a lot with Claude Kirkpatrick. He'd been about to ask her what Kirkpatrick was doing there when she'd changed the subject and he'd forgotten about it. Now he wondered what Claude had been doing there.

Taylor handed him his cone. He wanted to talk to her, but he couldn't do it now. There were too many customers and she might not be willing to say anything with his father present.

After
Lansa
paid Taylor, he and Will walked outside and sat on a bench. The temperature had warmed to the low sixties during the day and it was still mild out.

"It's a nice town,"
Lansa
said.

Will pushed away the disturbing thoughts that had entered his head. "Yeah, but you know what? I think about the reservation a lot. It's strange, but I really think I miss being there."

"We don't have all the stuff you've got here."

"I know, but I've been thinking that all the stuff doesn't matter so much to me anymore. I just miss being on the mesa and looking out over the desert. There's a certain feeling there. I don't know how to describe it, but it's something special."

"It's probably how the first Hopis felt when they arrived. They knew they'd reached their spiritual homeland and the great migration was over."

"Where were the people before the migration?" Will asked.

Lansa
sipped his coffee. "I think you know that in our myths, it's said that
Masau
guided the people from the previous world into this one."

Will had expected him to say Siberia or Asia and was surprised to hear his father mention
Masau
. He took it as a cue that it was time to tell his own tale. "Dad, I've been having dreams about
Masau
. More than just dreams, actually."

His father's face was impossible to read. "Tell me about them."

Will began by describing the dream he'd had while he was unconscious at the football game, and how, later in the game, an image of
Masau
had appeared to him in the stands. He described all the incidents and ended by saying that the John Wayne character in his dream Monday night had begun as
Masau
.

"
Masau
is a powerful being,"
Lansa
said. "He's known to enter dreams and to change his appearance. I'm not surprised you thought you were awake during some of your dreams. That's another one of
Masau's
tricks."

Will frowned. "But is
Masau
real?" He knew it didn't come out right, but he didn't know any other way of saying it.

"
Masau
is real, but real in a different way from you and me. In one sense, he's a projection of something inside us, a part of us related to the primal spirit of our people, and maybe to all people. But in another sense, he's an independent being, a trickster who cavorts through our world and penetrates our lives in very strange ways."

Will wasn't sure he understood what his father was saying, except that he knew his time on the reservation had awakened something within him he wasn't sure he liked. "What do you mean?"

"As I've told you,
Masau
is many things, including a god of death. So I'm not surprised that he appeared to you when there was death nearby."

The ice cream, which Will normally craved, tasted like chalk in his mouth. "I feel like I'm responsible. I should've waited for Myra to leave before I drove away from the parking lot."

"You might have been able to prevent it from happening at that place and that time. But you couldn't be with her every moment of the day. Her death is not your fault."

Lansa
stood up and tossed his empty paper cup in a trash can. Will did the same with the remainder of his cone. They started walking back to Will's house. "But why did I have these dreams? That's what I want to know."

"That's another matter. We'll talk about that later."

"But I want to know now."

They continued on in silence past City Market, then turned right and headed down Original Street toward Ute Street and the house. "You were selected, Will."

"Selected? What do you mean?"

Lansa
looked up at a row of expensive condominiums. "Last summer when we went on the pilgrimage to
Kisiwu
, you attracted
Masau's
attention."

Will nodded. He hadn't forgotten his frightening experience inside the cave at the Spring of the Shadows or the peculiar dreams that had followed.

"You were chosen then to be initiated into the tribe. Do you understand?"

"But I came back here."

"That doesn't matter. When
Masau
selects you, the initiation will take place regardless of where you are or what you're doing."

"But why now?"

"Because it's Hawk Moon, or the Initiates' Moon. The first initiation ceremony is taking place right now as part of
Wuwuchim
."

When Will had arrived at the reservation, he'd known almost nothing of the Hopi ceremonies. But he'd soon learned about the annual cycle of dances and rituals, and now he recalled that
Wuwuchim
was the first of the three winter rites. It was also the time of the year when the
kachinas
returned to the Hopi mesas after spending the summer months in their home in the San Francisco Mountains.

The conversation and his thoughts about intimate Hopi matters seemed out of place in Aspen. Just the sight of people in expensive designer clothing passing by left Will feeling as if he were caught between two worlds, a part of each, yet alienated from both of them.

"What you saw in your dream was the third day of
Wuwuchim
when we smoke over the
pahos
that have been made on the first two days,"
Lansa
said. "After that the
pahos
are taken to shrines and then the crier chief publicly announces the beginning of
Wuwuchim
from a rooftop."

Will remembered the
pahos
,
or feathered prayer sticks, he had taken into the cave at
Kisiwu
and how concerned his father had been about where he had placed them.

"But in my dream, I saw Myra. What did that have to do with the ceremony?"

"Nothing and everything.
Masau
showed you the event that would be your challenge. In order to continue with the initiation, you must overcome the obstacles you face."

As they neared Will's house, one question lingered, and no matter how much he wanted to push it aside, he knew he must ask it. "Dad, did
Masau
have something to do with what happened to Myra?"

Lansa
shook his head. "
Masau
is not God. He may see death, but he doesn't create the circumstances that lead to it."

That didn't make Will feel any better. It just meant that his vision was telling him what he and everyone else already suspected: Myra was dead.

T
aylor was peering into the mirror on the inside of her locker door when Will walked up to her, intent on getting answers. Her eyes widened, she turned around, and put a hand to her throat.

"Will, you startled me sneaking up that way."

"I wasn't sneaking. You got a minute?"

She closed her locker, and her eyes darted right, left, then back to Will. She looked annoyed. "Walk me to my class. There're too many big ears around here."

"Is something wrong?" he asked as they headed down the hall.

"It's nothing. Just that, well, word has gotten around that I'm still friendly with you. Even Mr.
Boorman
, my history teacher, said I shouldn't be seen with you. That it didn't look good."

"
Boorman
said that?" Will felt a sinking sensation in the pit of his stomach as he realized his coach had turned against him. "What else did he say?"

She hugged her books to her chest as they continued at a slower pace. "He said you played the game Friday even though you knew Myra was missing and that you changed the play at the end so you could get your record. He said it looked real bad for you, that you had drugs in your blood and that you'd lied to the sheriff. He couldn't understand why you hadn't been arrested yet."

Will's throat tightened; his voice cracked as he spoke. "When did he say that?"

"After class yesterday."

"I know it looks bad, but—"

"I believe you, Will. I don't think you'd hurt Myra."

"You may be the only one around here who still believes me. Maybe I should just call you tonight. There's something I've got to talk to you about."

She stopped and turned to him. "No. Ask me now."

It seemed everyone in the hail was staring at them. "It's about last summer when Myra was working with you at the shop. You were going out with Jerry Wharton, weren't you?"

"You don't think he had anything to do with what happened to Myra, do you?"

"Should I?"

"Jerry's really okay, Will. He's just stubborn, and he holds grudges too long."

Will nodded. "I'm not concerned about him. But I remember Myra saying something about Claude Kirkpatrick hanging out at the shop with Wharton. Did Claude go out with Myra while I was gone?"

Taylor took a deep breath, then slowly exhaled as she nodded. "She didn't want to tell you. She thought you'd take it wrong."

"So she was seeing him."

"For a while, but she just wanted to forget about it. It didn't work out."

"Was Claude doing the Chill? You told me it was around last summer."

Taylor glanced over Will's shoulder at someone passing by. "I think so," she whispered. "Claude and Jerry wanted us to try it. That was when things started to fall apart with Myra and Claude, because we didn't want anything to do with it."

Myra must have wanted to tell him about her and Claude when she'd mentioned him coming to the shop. But she'd changed her mind, maybe thinking that he would be jealous. Or maybe it was something else. "Taylor, you don't think Myra was . . .”

"Pregnant?"

The word hung in the air, twisted and turned in Will's mind. His head pounded. His face felt hot. Was that what this was all about?

"No, I'm sure that wasn't it," Taylor said. "She would've told me. Besides, I don't think things ever got that far with her and Claude. But something was on her mind, something she couldn't even tell me."

He remembered that Myra had wanted to tell him something before he'd said it was over between them. "What do you think it was?"

Taylor shook her head. "I wish I knew. I've got to go. I'm going to be late."

Will hurried to class, his thoughts on Claude Kirkpatrick. He would see him at lunch and confront him.

A
ll morning, Will considered how he would approach Claude, what he would say. He didn't want to make any accusations, but it was going to be difficult to ask him about his relationship with Myra without doing so—especially after what happened in the parking lot after school the other day.

Finally, when it was time for lunch, Will hurried out of class at the sound of the bell. He wanted to catch Claude before he entered the lunchroom, so he waited across the hall.

It wasn't hard to spot Claude's curly head of hair towering above everyone else. He was walking with Paige Davis. Tall and graceful, her long neck was arched as she listened to Kirkpatrick. Will stepped in front of the pair. "Claude, I've got to talk to you about something."

"Hey, I'm sorry I lost my head Monday. It was all my fault."

"It's okay. That's not what I want to talk to you about."