Delia Ortiz and Lani Walker's Relationship

Delia Ortiz and Lani Walker are linked less by an established friendship than by Fat Crack Ortiz’s troubled forecast of what their relationship may become. He sees two powerful women whose conflict could divide their community, but also believes they will eventually be friends and do good things together. Brandon Walker initially mistakes that future possibility for a present reality; the correction makes their relationship one of the unresolved bonds occupying Fat Crack near the end of his life.

A Friendship Not Yet Formed

When Fat Crack names Delia and Lani among the lost girls, Brandon asks whether Delia is his daughter-in-law. Fat Crack answers by distinguishing the women’s histories: Delia’s mother saved her, and he brought her home; Brandon and Diana Ladd saved Lani and are giving her back to their people. He also says that I’itoi has chosen Brandon to speak for Roseanne Orozco. In this account, Delia and Lani are connected through different acts of rescue and return, rather than through a shared past or a settled friendship.

Fat Crack then predicts that the two women will someday be friends. His explanation is simple and pointed: both are smart, and both will do good things for their community. Brandon replies that he thought they were friends already. Fat Crack’s sigh and silence mark the gap between Brandon’s assumption and his own understanding. The scene does not describe a specific argument between Delia and Lani, nor does it explain exactly what has kept them apart. It establishes instead that Fat Crack regards their present relationship as unfinished and their future friendship as important.

Different Histories, Connected Lives

The contrast Fat Crack draws rests on distinct beginnings. He remembers Lani as the infant he and Wanda Ortiz collected from the hospital and brought to the Walkers’ home at Gates Pass. Even during that act, he felt certain that placing the child with Brandon and Diana was right. Delia’s earliest circumstances are less clear to him: he recalls being summoned to Topawa, finding Delia with her mother, Ellie Chavez, and seeing that Ellie had visible bruises and cuts. Fat Crack later describes Delia’s mother as having saved her and himself as having brought her home. These recollections place both women within networks of care, but the different routes by which they came into those networks matter to his sense that their relationship may carry larger consequences.

Their later connection also runs through the Ortiz and Walker families. Delia married Fat Crack’s younger son, Leo Ortiz. Brandon knows that Delia and Leo left the Ortiz Compound after a family dispute and moved to what had been Delia’s aunt Julia’s home in Little Tucson. Wanda Ortiz had been heartbroken, particularly because Delia was pregnant with a boy who would be the first grandson to carry the Ortiz name. These facts give Brandon a possible family context for Fat Crack’s distress, but they do not establish that the dispute itself was between Delia and Lani.

Fat Crack’s Concern and Forecast

Fat Crack wonders whether his foreboding about Brandon has something to do with the coming conflict between Delia and Lani. He remembers first seeing each woman in circumstances that called for care, but he does not present their conflict as settled or explain its cause. His description is a warning about a possible division among their people, not a report of a fully defined contest. The distinction matters: the text gives weight to his concern while leaving the women’s own positions and the dispute’s particulars unstated.

The forecast holds conflict and eventual friendship together. Fat Crack does not deny the possibility that the women’s struggle may cause serious division; neither does he treat that outcome as inevitable. His confidence in their intelligence and future contributions underwrites his expectation that they may move beyond their present distance. Their anticipated friendship is therefore not merely personal reconciliation in his account. It is linked to what each may do for the community, even though the specific work he foresees is not identified.

Brandon’s Partial Understanding

After Fat Crack entrusts Looks at Nothing’s medicine pouch to Brandon, Brandon understands the gesture as a farewell and recognizes that Fat Crack knows he is dying. He considers calling Lani, but puts his phone away, uncertain whether Fat Crack intended him to bring her home. His thoughts turn instead to Fat Crack’s distress that Delia and Lani are not friends. Brandon has not given Delia much thought before: he knows her as the tribal attorney and Leo’s wife, while much of his knowledge of the family dispute comes from Wanda’s account to Diana.

Brandon wonders whether the breach in the Ortiz family has something to do with the Walkers and whether that might explain Fat Crack’s insistence that Looks at Nothing’s medicine pouch go to Lani. These remain Brandon’s questions, not confirmed explanations. His uncertainty preserves the relationship’s central tension: Fat Crack believes Delia and Lani’s bond matters, but Brandon can only see fragments of why. The forecast consequently joins a private family concern to a wider communal prospect, without revealing whether or how the predicted friendship will be achieved.