Fat Crack's funeral and funeral feast

Fat Crack Ortiz’s funeral and funeral feast turn a public farewell into a reckoning with the private acts through which he bound people to one another. At Baboquivari High School, Delia Ortiz and Lani Walker each explain how he changed her life; Delia’s testimony, in particular, moves her from resentment toward the recognition that Lani, too, has a rightful place among the mourners. The burial at Ban Thak and the meal that follows extend that recognition from the family to the wider community.

The service and the man being mourned

The gym at Baboquivari High School is filled beyond its seating: the bleachers are packed, folding chairs cover the floor, and an open casket surrounded by banks of flowers stands on a makeshift podium. The gathering reflects Fat Crack Ortiz’s standing in the community. Years of running a car-repair and tow-truck business with his two sons had led to his representing Sells on the tribal council and later serving as tribal chairman. His place as Looks at Nothing’s chosen successor had further strengthened his influence.

The service initially fails to do justice to that history. Reverend Jeremy Moon, a Korean-born pastor of Sells First Presbyterian Church who is new both to the United States and to the Tohono O’odham Nation, has agreed to officiate as a favor to Wanda Ortiz. He repeatedly calls the deceased Gabriel Ortiz, making plain that he never knew Fat Crack and knows little about the person the packed gym has come to honor. Delia sits in the front row between Leo Ortiz and Wanda, painfully aware of her disagreements with her father-in-law, but she also feels that the eulogy is an embarrassment to a man respected by the people in the room. The distance between the pastor’s unfamiliar name and the community’s knowledge of Fat Crack creates the need for someone who knew him to speak.

Delia’s testimony and changed perspective

Delia has not planned to give a eulogy, and Wanda has not asked her to speak. Yet when Reverend Moon invites additional comments, Delia rises. She stumbles on the steps, and Fat Crack’s older son steadies her; at the lectern, she is nervous not because public speaking is new to her but because she is addressing her own people, who feel in some ways as unfamiliar to her as Fat Crack did to the pastor. The encouraging nods of Leo and the older son help her begin.

Delia explains that Fat Crack saved her life twice. When she was seven, her parents were having difficulties, and her mother needed to leave the reservation to study in Tempe. The nuns at Topawa offered the family a broken-down car, but it would not run. Fat Crack arrived in his old tow truck and spent the day getting it working. That repair made it possible for Delia’s mother to pursue her education and for Delia to receive one herself. Years later, when Delia was living in Washington, D.C., and struggling in her marriage, Fat Crack offered her work back home on the reservation. She initially refused, but, as she acknowledges, refusing him and making the refusal stick were different things. His invitation brought her home at a moment when she did not know where to turn.

Her account also recalls Fat Crack’s influence beyond the two rescues. Delia remembers her aunt Julia Joaquin despairing that she would find a suitable husband, while Wanda told her that she and Fat Crack had reached similar conclusions about their sons, both then confirmed bachelors. Delia reflects humorously that Fat Crack may have stirred things up or performed the Peace Smoke: the sons later married, as did Delia and Leo. The audience answers this story with gentle, approving laughter. Delia then describes Fat Crack as a medicine man who had not wanted the position but accepted it, and who carried it out carefully and seriously. Although she and he had disagreed, she calls him honorable and says she will miss him every day. Her praise restores the personal name and character missing from the officiant’s remarks, while making room for both affection and past conflict.

Lani’s claim to kinship

After Delia returns to her seat to polite applause, Lani steps to the lectern. Delia, pregnant and feeling old, heavy, and jealous beside the young woman’s poise, privately resents what she sees as Lani’s attempt to claim membership in the Ortiz family. But Lani does not claim a place through marriage or blood. She recounts that Wanda saved her life when she was a baby, and that after Lani was adopted, Wanda and Fat Crack became her godparents. Those in the gym know the story of the Ant-Bit Child: when Lani’s blood relatives regarded the baby as a dangerous object and would not take her, Wanda and Gabe Ortiz helped arrange her unconventional adoption.

Lani also tells the mourners that Fat Crack stayed beside her when she needed a medicine man during a difficult period. Her words are measured: she welcomes the large attendance in his honor and says she will miss him forever. Delia can find no fault in the tribute, yet still feels the sting of Lani’s having spoken. The scene does not erase Delia’s jealousy; instead, it makes her reconsider it. Watching Lani return to her seat, Delia begins to understand that Fat Crack had exerted a lasting influence on Lani as he had on her, and that Lani’s relationship with him gives her a genuine reason to grieve publicly. When Leo asks whether Delia is all right, she nods but cannot speak. She finally admits she is okay as tears come, then leans on his shoulder. Her grief is mixed with the suspicion that she has let Fat Crack down one last time and can no longer make amends. The funeral thus changes Delia’s understanding of Lani, but leaves her regret unresolved.

Burial and the funeral feast

The cortege stretches for a mile on its way to the cemetery at Ban Thak. By the time it arrives, the sun has dropped behind the crest of Ioligam. Mourners crowd the dusty cemetery, negotiating crumbled headstones and crooked crosses and standing on what may be graves to hear Reverend Moon’s words. After the casket is lowered and covered with new blankets from JC Penney, Leo and Richard Ortiz help Wanda place the first shovelful of earth on it. The children then take their turns, one by one, while the men fill the grave. The blankets, the shared act of covering the casket, and the family’s turns at the grave make the burial a communal labor rather than a private farewell.

The mourners then move toward the feast house as cooking fires fill the warm desert twilight with the smell of wood smoke. Wanda stands at the door and offers a short blessing, giving thanks that even in sorrow the community has food and can remember to live. She opens the door to the first group. The meal is served in carefully limited waves: groups of forty or fifty enter every fifteen or twenty minutes, and the next group waits until those inside have finished and left. Brian Fellows and Brandon Walker, who arrived at the gym after the service had begun, stand near the end of the line while their wives help cook and serve. The feast extends the funeral’s acts of remembrance into acts of care: those who have gathered to mourn are fed in turn, and grief is held within the work of sustaining the living.