Gabe “Fat Crack” Ortiz

Gabe “Fat Crack” Ortiz is a Tohono O’odham medicine man, a blind elder, and one of Brandon Walker’s oldest friends. His story turns on a distinction he learned from his mentor, Looks at Nothing: losing sight does not necessarily mean losing vision. Near the end of his life, that conviction shapes his farewell to Brandon, his foreboding about what is to come, and his decision to entrust a medicine pouch to Lani Walker.

Identity and Vision

By Tohono O’odham standards, Gabe “Fat Crack” Ortiz had lived to a ripe old age: seventy-two. He had lost his sight, but the words Looks at Nothing spoke to him as they raced in a tow truck toward Diana Ladd’s home at Gates Pass remained with him. The lesson was that blindness and vision were not the same thing. Only lately, he reflects, has he begun to understand some of what happened years earlier, when Julia Joaquin came to see him. As a prominent figure in Little Tucson, she was ceremonially ushered into the tribal chairman’s office; he greeted her formally in their language, expecting small talk, but she went straight to the point. The account leaves the substance of that meeting unstated, preserving it as part of the partial understanding he is still developing.

His vision also takes the form of glimpses of the future. When Leo Ortiz and Delia Ortiz told him that Delia was pregnant, he knew that one baby would not survive, and that another son would thrive and grow tall and strong. He kept the first knowledge to himself and likewise did not disclose the second. These examples make his foresight a private burden rather than a power he uses to direct other people’s choices. After Looks at Nothing’s precious crystals were no longer available to him, he still sensed that something was wrong with Brandon, but could not clarify the warning or prevent what might follow.

Friendship and the Medicine Pouch

Gabe “Fat Crack” Ortiz and Brandon Walker share a long friendship marked by repeated ceremonies and practical trust. They had smoked the Peace Smoke together many times. On one occasion, Gabe “Fat Crack” Ortiz handed Brandon a worn medicine pouch, telling him to keep it for Lani Walker when she came home. He explained that Looks at Nothing and he, both blind medicine men, wanted her to have it. Brandon understood the significance of the request and accepted the responsibility.

The handover was not an incidental exchange. Gabe “Fat Crack” Ortiz had gathered the pouch, a lighter, and the remaining pieces of paper into a huashomi before offering the bag. By placing it in Brandon’s care for Lani Walker, he linked his own practice to the teaching he had received from Looks at Nothing and arranged for that inheritance to continue beyond his lifetime. Later, when Brandon explained that the pouch was for their daughter, Diana Ladd recognized the implication: Gabe “Fat Crack” Ortiz must have known he was nearing death. Brandon could take comfort in the clarity of the gift, but not in its necessity; the loss of his old friend hurt.

Community Knowledge and Investigation

Gabe “Fat Crack” Ortiz also helped Brandon Walker understand how records might reopen a neglected case. He had told Brandon that a grant-funded study in the early 1990s placed existing health records from Sells Indian Health Services Hospital into computers. The project, which included records dating back to the 1950s, was meant to compare Tohono O’odham longevity with that of other populations and track diseases associated with deaths on the reservation. Together with money from tribal casino operations, the study was one reason the hospital later had its own kidney dialysis center.

That information mattered when Brandon considered how Emma Orozco might obtain records of Roseanne Orozco’s appendectomy in July 1970. The records might be readily available in the computer system, but access was another matter: Brandon expected that a request from a white outsider would meet polite resistance. The contrast between stored information and the power to retrieve it gives Gabe “Fat Crack” Ortiz’s remembered advice practical weight. His knowledge helps connect a family’s pursuit of answers to an archive shaped by institutional authority, without erasing the barriers surrounding it.

Farewell and Legacy

The transfer of the pouch and a shared smoking of the Peace Smoke become Gabe “Fat Crack” Ortiz’s way of saying thank you and goodbye. Afterward, he remains outside while Wanda Ortiz goes back into the house, and the chill he feels is foreboding rather than a response to the weather. He is accustomed to glimpses of what lies ahead, but this time his sense that something is wrong comes without a means of changing the outcome. His awareness therefore sharpens the scene’s helplessness: he can recognize an approaching danger without being able to name or avert it.

After his death, Wanda Ortiz tells Brandon Walker that Gabe “Fat Crack” Ortiz was ready. The funeral is planned for four o’clock Monday afternoon in the high school gym, led by a Presbyterian minister, with burial at Ban Thak among his parents and his aunt Rita Antone. For Brandon, the medicine pouch makes the loss tangible and gives him something to carry forward; for Lani Walker, it is an inheritance from two blind healers. Gabe “Fat Crack” Ortiz’s ending thus joins farewell to continuation: his body is buried with family, while the knowledge entrusted through Looks at Nothing passes onward.