Vanishing Acts Read online

  She folds another cone of piki. "So Rabbit ran off to the edge of the world where every morning, Sun came up. He practiced with his bow and arrow the whole way. But when he got there, Sun had left the sky. Rabbit thought that was cowardly, but he decided to wait for Sun to return the next day. Sun, though, had seen Rabbit practicing and decided to have a little fun with him. Back in those days, you see, Sun didn't come up slowly like he does now. He'd burst into the sky with one leap. So the next day, Sun rolled far away from where he usually jumped into the sky and then leaped up. By the time Rabbit got his bow and arrow together, Sun was already so high he couldn't be touched. Rabbit stamped his foot and shouted, but Sun only laughed.

  "One morning," Ruthann continues, "Sun got careless. He jumped more slowly than usual, and Rabbit's arrow plunged into his side. Rabbit was delighted! He'd shot the Sun! But when he looked up again he saw how flames bled from the wound. Suddenly the whole world seemed to be on fire."

  She stands up. "Rabbit ran to a cottonwood, and a greasewood tree, but neither one would hide him--they were too afraid of being burned to a crisp. Suddenly he heard a voice calling to him: 'Sikyatavo! Under me! Hurry!' It was a small green bush with flowers like cotton. Rabbit ducked beneath it, just as the flames leaped over the bush. Everything crackled and hissed, and then went quiet." Ruthann looks at Sophie. "The earth all around was black and burnt, but the fire was gone. And the little bush that had saved Rabbit wasn't green anymore, but a deep yellow. Even today, that kind of bush grows green, and then turns yellow when it feels the sun."

  "What happened to Rabbit?" Sophie asks.

  "He was never the same. He has brown spots on his fur, from where the fire burned him. And he's not so tough anymore, you know. He runs away and hides, instead of putting up a fight. Sun isn't the same, either," Ruthann says. "He makes himself so bright that no one can look at him long enough to shoot straight."

  Ruthann cracks her knuckles; silver and turquoise rings wink like fireflies. "Let's clean up," she says to Sophie, "and then if your dad says it's okay, you can come with me to the garage sale around the corner and scope out inventory."

  Sophie runs into the house, leaving me alone with Ruthann. "You don't have to keep her with you."

  "It's good to have a child to tell a story to."

  "Do you have any of your own?"

  The lines of Ruth's face carve deeper. "I had a daughter once."

  Maybe we can all be divided along this rift: Those who have been lucky enough to keep our children, and those who have had them taken away from us. Before I can find the appropriate response, Sophie comes out of the house, dragging a bucket of sand behind her. She pours it onto the fire, banking the embers, a small cloud of soot sighing up around her knees.

  "Soph," I say, "if you can be a good girl, you can stay with Ruthann a little longer."

  "Of course she can be good," Ruthann says. "Where I come from, on Second Mesa, our grandmothers give us our names, and our grandfathers give us our manners. The ones who aren't good don't have grandfathers to tell them how to behave. And you have a grandfather, don't you, Siwa?" She hands Sophie the bowl of leftover batter. "Kitchen sink," she instructs.

  The sun has risen high enough to gnaw on the back of my neck. I think of Rabbit, and his arrow. "Thanks, Ruthann."

  She gives me a half smile. "Watch your aim, Sikyatavo," she warns, and she follows Sophie inside.

  In 1977, in Arizona, a man could squirrel his daughter away to another part of the country and it was considered kidnapping. By 1978 the laws had changed, and that same man, for the same act, would be charged with custodial interference--a lesser felony. "Jesus, Andrew," I murmur, poring over the books in my borrowed conference room at Hamilton, Hamilton. "Couldn't you have waited a few months?" Frustrated, I pick up one of the law books and whip it across the room, narrowly missing Chris as he walks in.

  "What's the matter with you?" he asks.

  "My client is an idiot."

  "Of course he is. If he wasn't, he wouldn't need a lawyer." Chris sits down and leans back in the chair across from me. "Boy, did you miss out last night, bud. Picture a natural redhead named Lotus, following me into the men's room at The Frantic Gecko to demonstrate how flexible a yoga instructor can actually be. And she had a friend who could lift her wineglass with her foot." He smiles. "I know, I know. You're practically married. But still. You got any Tylenol?"

  I shake my head.

  "Then I definitely need coffee. You take cream or sugar?"

  "I don't drink--"

  "Coming right up," he says, and he leaves.

  I break out in a sweat, imagining already what it will be like to have a cup sitting on the table a few inches from me, steaming and fragrant. What most people don't understand is the interstitial space between lifting that mug and emptying its contents in the sink. In that instant, which is only as long as a thought, need can grow to such enormous proportions that it muscles reason out of the way, and before you know it, I am lifting the drink to my mouth.

  To drive my mind away from this, I start to flip through the pages of Arizona statutes to see if there's an affirmative defense for kidnapping, and finally find the paragraph I am looking for.

  SS13-417. Necessity defense. Conduct that would otherwise constitute an offense is justified if a reasonable person was compelled to engage in the proscribed conduct and the person had no reasonable alternative to avoid imminent public or private injury greater than the injury that might reasonably result from the person's own conduct.

  Or in other words: I had to do it.

  Having an alcoholic wife isn't a reason to steal a child. However, if I can prove that Elise was an alcoholic, that she couldn't care for the child, that a call was made to protective services or the police, and that they didn't respond adequately; well, then Andrew has a shot at acquittal. A jury might be convinced that Andrew had exhausted all other possible options, that he had no choice but to take his daughter and run ... provided, first, that Andrew can convince me.

  Chris walks into the conference room. "Here you go," he says, sliding the mug across the table. "The breakfast of champions. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to find a physician to surgically remove my head."

  After he leaves, I walk toward the steaming mug. It has been years since I've taken a sip, and I can still taste the beautiful bitter of it. I inhale deeply. Then I dump the coffee--china mug and all--into the trash.

  The detention officer manning the visiting area at the jail nods at me. "Take any empty one," he says. It's a quiet morning; the doors are all shut, and the lights are off. I open the first door on the right and turn on the light--only to find an inmate with his striped pants down around his ankles, screwing his attorney on top of the Formica conference table. "Sonofabitch," the guy says, his hand reaching to pull up his shorts. The woman blinks in the sudden light and tugs her pencil skirt down, knocking over a box full of files.

  "Let me guess," I say cheerfully to the lawyer. "Pro boner work?"

  With an apology, I settle myself into the next room to wait for Andrew. He comes in as I'm still picturing the attorney next door--a pubic defender, I guess you'd call her--and smiling. "What's so funny?" Andrew asks.

  It is the kind of story that, a week ago, I would have told him over dessert. But Andrew is dressed in the same stripes and pink thermals as the man next door, and that is sobering. "Nothing." I clear my throat. "Look, we need to talk about your case."

  There is a right way and a wrong way to go about presenting an affirmative defense to a client. You basically explain where the escape hatch is and then say, "Hmm, if you had a ladder to get up there, you'd be home free"--hoping like hell that your client will be bright enough to then volunteer that he does indeed have a ladder hidden away in his breast pocket. The fact that a ladder can't possibly fit in his breast pocket or that he never in his life owned a ladder is not nearly as important as the fact that he tells you, flat out, that he is in possession of one. As the attorney, all you need to do