Baboquivari High School’s gym is the setting for the funeral of Gabe “Fat Crack” Ortiz, transformed from a school hall into an overflowing public memorial. The space brings the community together to mourn a prominent leader, while Delia Ortiz’s unexpected rise to speak makes the funeral a moment of personal and communal recognition.

A Gym Turned into a Memorial

The gym is filled beyond its usual seating: the bleachers are packed, and rows of folding chairs cover the entire floor. At the center, an open casket rests on a makeshift podium, surrounded by lush banks of flowers as people come to pay their respects. The crowded room gives visible scale to the loss and to the place Gabe “Fat Crack” Ortiz held in the community.

The Funeral and Its Eulogy

The service is led by Reverend Jeremy Moon, the pastor of Sells First Presbyterian Church and a newcomer to both the United States and the Tohono O’odham Nation. He conducts it as a favor to Wanda Ortiz, but his repeated references to Gabriel Ortiz make plain that he had never met Fat Crack and knew little about the man being mourned. In a hall filled with people who knew and respected him, the mismatch between the formal eulogy and the community’s memory becomes especially apparent.

Delia Ortiz Takes the Floor

Delia sits in the front row between Leo Ortiz and Wanda, feeling miserable and convinced that the room knows of her very public disagreements with her late father-in-law. Although she had not planned to speak and Wanda had not asked her, the inadequate eulogy moves her to rise. As tribal attorney, she is one of the family’s most prominent members, yet speaking to this assembly unsettles her: the people gathered there feel, in many ways, as alien to her as Fat Crack was to Reverend Moon.

On her way to the lectern, Delia stumbles and nearly falls. Baby, Fat Crack’s older son—the son Delia had rejected—catches her and steadies her. At the front of the room, she sees Leo and Baby nodding encouragement from the front row. Their shared gesture gives her the support she needs to speak, turning the gym from a place where her estrangement is exposed into a space where she can address the community.