Peace Smoke

Peace Smoke is a Tohono O’odham practice in which people share a hand-rolled cigarette made with wiw, or wild tobacco. In the novel, it is more than a repeated ceremony: its passage between people makes welcome tangible, allows estranged family members to reconcile, and gives farewell a form that can be carried forward. The huashomi, the tobacco, and the old lighter bind particular encounters together, turning a brief act of smoking into a language of trust and inheritance.

Materials and Practice

The ritual’s material details recur across very different circumstances. Looks at Nothing carries his fringed buckskin medicine pouch, or huashomi, and uses an old Zippo lighter to ignite wiw rolled into a cigarette. The pouch stores the tobacco and lighter; in later scenes, its worn leather also marks the years and relationships gathered around the practice. Fat Crack Ortiz keeps and uses these objects after receiving the pouch from Looks at Nothing, whose name and teaching remain attached to it.

At the center of the act is a cigarette passed from person to person. Looks at Nothing first gives it to Fat Crack Ortiz and then to Brandon Walker, ceremonially saying nawoj, a word Brandon later learns means friendly gift in the context of the Tohono O’odham Peace Smoke. The gesture makes participation reciprocal: the smoke is not simply consumed by one person but shared between them. The repeated hand-to-hand movement, rather than an explanation of the practice, gives Brandon his first sense that he has been admitted to something special.

The scenes also retain the physical particulars of smoking. Brandon remembers the tobacco’s sharp, bitter taste and the effort it takes not to cough; years later, he struggles to roll a ragged cigarette himself. Fat Crack Ortiz cannot see to judge his work, but Brandon feels self-conscious all the same. The ritual is learned through handling its objects and taking part, not through mastery of a polished performance.

Brandon Walker’s First Participation

Brandon’s first encounter takes place beneath a mesquite tree beside the Pima County Sheriff’s office. Fat Crack Ortiz has brought Looks at Nothing to the department and waited for Brandon to arrive. The old medicine man fills and rolls the cigarette with practiced ease, using wiw rather than the unfiltered Camels Brandon had smoked before quitting. After lighting it with a Zippo that appears to date from World War II, Looks at Nothing passes the cigarette to Fat Crack Ortiz and then to Brandon.

For Brandon, the bitterness of the smoke is inseparable from the meaning of being included. Even as it singes his throat and lungs, he understands that he has been allowed into an experience most Anglos do not encounter in a lifetime. The scene establishes the ritual as a form of welcome that is intimate without being explained away: Brandon’s entry comes through accepting the cigarette and sharing it with the others.

That early encounter acquires a second life decades later, when Fat Crack Ortiz brings out the same huashomi. By then the buckskin pouch is far more threadbare than Brandon remembers from the sheriff’s-office parking lot. The lighter, too, bears the marks of use: its brass is worn thin and the grooves on its wheel have disappeared. Yet it catches on Brandon’s first try. The familiar objects make the later exchange continuous with the earlier one even as Fat Crack Ortiz’s condition has changed.

Lani Walker’s Ceremony and Inheritance

Peace Smoke enters Lani Walker’s life during the final night of her required sixteen-day fasting and purification ceremony, e lihmhun, after she has killed Mitch Johnson. Throughout the period Fat Crack Ortiz has come to her every day, bringing soothing salve and the salt-free evening meal the fast requires. Although they speak about many things, Lani does not tell him about the scar she keeps secret; she is sure he knows, but the subject remains unspoken between them.

On the last night, Fat Crack Ortiz brings the meal as well as the huashomi he received from Looks at Nothing. After they eat together, he draws a circle around them with a stick. Within it, he opens the pouch, takes out wiw, rolls a crude cigarette, and lights it with Looks at Nothing’s old Zippo. Sitting together on the mountain, Lani’s beloved family friend, tribal chairman, respected medicine man, and godfather shares Peace Smoke with her for the first time. The ritual arrives at the end of a period she has spent alone, but it does not replace that solitude with easy explanation: the powerful smoke leaves her light-headed, and some of their conversation drifts from her conscious memory like smoke in cold night air.

The shared tobacco also belongs to a longer process of teaching. Fat Crack Ortiz shows Lani how to collect and dry wiw, the tobacco used in Peace Smoke. When she asks whether he taught the same things to his sons, Baby and Leo, he says they were not interested. He tells her that the knowledge and gifts given to her are not hers alone: she is to keep them and pass them along when she finds someone worthy. The practice therefore joins a physical skill to an obligation of transmission. Lani’s role is not only to receive the teaching but to safeguard it for another person.

That prospect becomes concrete when Lani holds her newborn son. She understands why Fat Crack Ortiz and Nana Dahd answered her questions patiently: she now has someone to whom she can pass on what she has learned. She recognizes the baby as receptive to the traditions that Baby and Leo did not want to learn, and resolves to teach him. Peace Smoke’s tobacco is thus part of an inheritance that moves through instruction and care as well as through the ceremony itself.

Reconciliation and Farewell

The ritual also gives Fat Crack Ortiz a way to make an ending legible without announcing it. Near the end of his life, he asks Brandon to help him smoke. Wanda Ortiz has discouraged him from lighting tobacco himself because she fears he might burn the house down, so Brandon rolls the cigarette and lights it. Fat Crack Ortiz hands him the lighter; Brandon lights the tobacco, passes it back, and says nawoj. They pass the cigarette between them several times, then Brandon grinds it out in the dirt when it is nearly burning their fingers.

The silence afterward lengthens. Fat Crack Ortiz gives Brandon the huashomi and tells him to give it to Lani when she comes home, explaining that Looks at Nothing and he both wanted her to have it. The Peace Smoke has been a friendly gift before; here it is also a goodbye, joined to the transfer of the objects that will let Lani continue the practice. Fat Crack Ortiz does not tell Brandon everything he senses about what is coming, but Brandon understands what the gift means. Later, when Brandon gives Lani the pouch, she recognizes Looks at Nothing’s huashomi and concludes that Fat Crack Ortiz knew he was dying.

A separate family gathering shows the ritual’s power to repair a relationship. On the night before Leo Ortiz and Delia Ortiz’s wedding, Fat Crack Ortiz insists that his sons sit down and share Peace Smoke. Only after doing so can they move on and let bygones be bygones. The reconciliation lasts beyond the immediate exchange: as the brothers later work together digging their father’s grave, Fat Crack Ortiz’s spirit remains a bond between them and their children. Across these scenes, Peace Smoke does not erase loss or disagreement. It gives people a shared act through which they can acknowledge connection, accept a parting, or begin again.