Lani Returns Home After Learning of Fat Crack’s Death

Lani Walker’s return after Fat Crack Ortiz’s death turns a distant telephone announcement into a journey home shaped by grief, practical obligations, and the family’s work of mourning. She moves from the disorientation of waking to the news to a clear decision to come home, and her arrival reveals that the people she hoped to see at the airport are already doing what the moment requires.

The News and the Decision

After spending most of the night awake, Lani sleeps through the morning and does not rise until early afternoon. She makes toast and coffee in the kitchen, then tries to study. But she cannot keep her eyes open; the words on the pages lose their meaning, and her head droops. The effort to resume ordinary work fails before she knows why.

A telephone rings later and startles her awake. It is four in the afternoon. Wanda Ortiz tells Lani that she went outside to check on Fat Crack and that he is gone. Lani understands what Wanda means without asking for clarification. She takes a deep breath, closes her eyes, and says she is coming home. The brevity of her response marks the shift: uncertainty about what to do gives way to a decision, even as the death itself is conveyed indirectly and without elaboration.

Making the Journey Possible

Returning cannot happen at once. Lani spends several hours contacting her professors, arranging how to handle her finals, and making plans for her belongings to be packed and shipped home. Only after those matters are settled does she book a flight. The sole available option will bring her to Phoenix early the following afternoon, extending the interval between the phone call and her arrival.

She tries to reach her parents only after purchasing the ticket. Lani first calls Brandon Walker, expecting him to be the more understanding parent; in her experience, Diana Ladd is the stricter disciplinarian and Brandon the easier touch. He does not answer. Before Lani can dial again, Diana calls to tell her the news, not yet knowing that Wanda has already reached her daughter. Lani explains that she has booked the Northwest flight from Minneapolis, gives Diana its arrival time, and says she will take the shuttle home. Diana rejects that last part of the plan: someone will meet her at the airport. Lani manages a thank-you, but the catch in her throat makes the strain of the call audible to both of them.

Arrival at Sky Harbor

During the long flight, Lani hopes that either her father or her brother will be waiting at Sky Harbor. Instead, she sees Candace and Tyler waving from beyond the security checkpoint. Diana had already explained that Davy Ladd could not come and that Candace and Tyler would take his place, but knowing this in advance has not prevented Lani from hoping for a different reunion.

Lani does not dislike Candace. Their lives and backgrounds have little in common, apart from their shared love for Lani’s brother, on which they agree completely. Yet the difference matters in this moment: Candace has no understanding of the particular absence Fat Crack will leave for Lani and Davy. Lani is exhausted from a flight on which she could not sleep and is still mourning. Tyler’s wails and screeches from his car seat accompany the drive home, but by then the disappointment she felt at the airport has given way to another understanding.

The Work of Mourning

On the way to the luggage carousels, Candace explains that Gabe’s sons asked him and Lani’s father to go to a village on the reservation and help dig the grave. She questions why the work must be done by hand, comparing it with the use of machines at cemeteries back home. Lani stops listening to the complaint. The practical detail she takes from it is that Brandon and Davy are not absent from the family’s response: they are at Ban Thak, doing the work that needs to be done.

Neither man has come to the airport, but both are present where Fat Crack’s death calls for them. That reversal settles Lani. Her attention shifts from the pickup she had hoped for to the labor her father and brother are undertaking, and she becomes content on the trip home. The return is therefore not completed simply by reaching Phoenix or getting into a car. Its emotional destination is the recognition that her family is gathered around the dead man and that her father and brother have joined the work of preparing his grave.