Lani Walker and Fat Crack Ortiz's Apprenticeship and Godfather-Goddaughter Bond

Lani Walker and Fat Crack Ortiz’s relationship is both familial and pedagogical: he is her godfather and the medicine man who guides her through a difficult time, while she becomes the attentive learner entrusted to preserve and transmit his teachings. Their bond gives the book’s passing of traditional knowledge a personal form, moving from Lani’s adoption into the Ortiz family to her recognition, as a mother, that the lessons she received are meant to continue beyond her.

Godparenthood and Family

Lani’s connection to Fat Crack Ortiz began in infancy. At his funeral, she introduced herself by recalling that Wanda Ortiz had saved her life as a baby and that, after her adoption, Wanda and Fat Crack became her godparents. The account places Fat Crack within the family that welcomed Lani when her blood relatives had regarded her as a dangerous object and refused to take her. His role was therefore not simply ceremonial: he belonged to the kinship network that made a home for her.

Years later, Lani described Fat Crack as the medicine man who stayed beside her during a very difficult time. Her public words of gratitude at his funeral joined personal loss to communal remembrance: she came to honor a godfather who had also been a source of care and guidance. The two aspects of the bond reinforce one another. His authority as a healer is part of her family history, and his family relationship gives their teaching a lasting intimacy.

A Healer’s Student

Fat Crack’s teaching appears as a relationship built through attention, questions, and shared practice. While he showed Lani how to gather and dry wiw, the wild tobacco used in the Peace Smoke, she asked whether he had taught the same things to his sons. He had not; they were not interested. The contrast makes Lani’s role distinctive without suggesting that she sought instruction merely to inherit a title. She listened, asked questions, and took seriously the knowledge he offered.

Fat Crack told her that Rita Antone had recognized her as special and capable of safeguarding what she knew. He affirmed that he had reached the same understanding: the gifts given to Lani were not hers to keep in isolation, but treasures to learn, preserve, and pass on when she found someone worthy. His teaching thus carried an obligation as well as a privilege. The apprenticeship concerned not only what Lani learned, but how she would care for that knowledge after him.

The Medicine Pouch and Parting

Before Fat Crack died, he gave Brandon Walker a fringed leather pouch and asked him to deliver it to Lani. Brandon had seen him the previous afternoon; when it was time to leave, they smoked the Peace Smoke, and Fat Crack entrusted the pouch to him for her. When Lani received it, she recognized it reverently as Looks at Nothing’s huashomi. She understood from the bequest that Fat Crack knew he was dying, though he had not told anyone.

The handoff gives material form to a relationship that had already been shaped by teaching. Fat Crack did not explain the gift to Lani directly; instead, Brandon carried it to her after their final meeting. The sequence links the Peace Smoke they shared, the pouch passed through Brandon, and Lani’s recognition of what had been entrusted to her. The object marks both a parting and a continuation: her godfather is gone, but his care and the tradition he taught remain with her.

Passing the Teaching Forward

Lani’s understanding of her apprenticeship comes fully into focus at the birth of her son. Looking down at the newborn, she realized why Fat Crack and Nana Dahd had patiently answered her questions: she would be able to give those answers to someone else. She recalled that Fat Crack’s sons had not wanted to learn the lore and traditions he hoped to teach them. Now, with a child of her own, she believed he would be interested, and she would be there to pass the knowledge along.

The relationship therefore ends not with the pouch alone, but with Lani recognizing her responsibility as a teacher. Fat Crack had told her that the gifts were to be kept and later shared; the birth scene turns that instruction into a future she can imagine and undertake. The book presents their bond as a chain of care and transmission, in which godparenthood opens into mentorship and mentorship reaches toward the next generation, without making Lani’s inheritance a claim that she has become a medicine man herself.