Land of Echoes

  He bobbed his head as if he'd expected that. But he didn't look guilty or ashamed. Julieta realized she was looking at a man who'd exhausted his remorse and come out the other side into purpose.

  "I thought you deserved a man who showed you some respect, Julieta. Okay? And a little goddamned staying power!" He shot her a hard look, clearly willing to hurt her if he had to to get his point across. "There are sins of commission, and there are sins of omission. I did that with Peter. But the way I really sinned was what I didn't do. I didn't follow up on it. I didn't come to you in six months or a year or two years and say, 'Julieta, I love you. I want to be with you. Marry me. Have my baby.' That's what I didn't do. You want me to feel bad, that's the one that hurts me now."

  He was saying all the taboo things, the forbidden things, and yet it was not shocking. They'd both known it, always known it, it had always been there and a source of secret strength and joy. But he had turned Peter away! If she'd known for sure that Peter was coming back, she'd never have given up the baby!

  Or would she have?

  Julieta's mind was racing. She could see herself back then: seven, eight months pregnant and gaining almost no weight, sacrificing the fat on her limbs to grow her baby. The gray winter seemed endless. She was scared to death by Garrett and Nick Stephanovic and in a rage against them, still in love with Peter and hating him savagely. If Peter had come back, one of two things would have happened. She'd have hit him and scratched him and told him to get out, get lost, how dare he leave her and immediately shack up with some Apache slut and then think he could walk back into her life! Or she'd have forgiven him utterly and embraced him and she'd've had the baby and she'd have gotten nothing from the divorce and Peter would have left her because that's who he was, he was a rolling stone and not constituted to stick with a job to pay the bills or wake up at three a.m. to change diapers. And her parents would never have forgiven her for any of it and she'd have turned into another single mother with a half-breed baby, batting around the trailer parks of Gallup.

  Still, she couldn't forgive Joseph. She raised her shaking hands to wipe the tears away.

  "What else, Joseph? Is that it?" She made her voice hard. "Am I done with my promise yet?"

  "No." He had turned gentle again, and that really frightened her. "No, Julieta. I'm sorry. That was the easy part."

  It was just another cemetery by the side of the highway, a square of ground separated from the road by a hundred yards of bare earth and rabbitbrush. A little one, lost in the vast sweep of desert, maybe forty graves surrounded by a wire fence with litter caught in the mesh. Some graves were flat earth marked by rectangular headstones, some were knee-high ridges of gravel topped by plastic flowers, bowls of glass beads, photos in plastic frames. A few were surmounted by little wooden crosses; this one was. The photo leaning against the base of the cross had the neutral-colored, motley background of a school portrait. A happy-looking, thin-faced boy often or eleven. Black-rimmed glasses and longish hair. Sort of a Navajo Harry Potter.

  A little plaque had been laid on the mound. Julieta's eyes flitted at it and darted away. Robert Linn Dodge. That had been his name. Her eyes fled again and came back long enough to see that the birth date was right. And that he'd died almost three years ago.

  "A congenital heart defect," Joseph said. "My uncle told me. He got the best care, but it . . . it didn't take."

  It was the first time he'd spoken since they'd arrived. Julieta had known immediately what they were there for. They were north of Naschitti when she'd felt the truck slowing. She'd looked up to see the cemetery and had known it all instantly.

  It was getting late, the sun was low above the Chuska ridge, the headstones and even the low grave mounds cast pools of shadow. The eastern horizons were impossibly distant and looked chilly. What a big empty sky. What big open country. Why is the earth where our dead are buried so different? The people in the cars going by don't know anything about this.

  Julieta touched the heat-clouded plastic over the boy's face. She could see herself there: the eyes, she decided, the nose. Peter, too? She couldn't remember Peter. He wasn't anybody anymore. She took her hand away. Here was the truth about her baby. And about Tommy.

  And yet when she thought about Tommy, she still felt that belly-deep pull, the sense of recognition. A faraway thought occurred to her: that this terrible fact created another possibility, that Cree Black should know about this, and soon. Or maybe that was just her clinging to her craziness.

  Whoever the parents were, they had loved this child: The grave was heaped with colorful trinkets that included sun-faded Power Rangers action figures, plastic statues of Jesus, cat's-eye marbles, cheap jewelry, seashells. Not all were dulled by dust and the bleaching sun; some had been placed recently. They still missed him. He had a such a happy face, despite his illness. He'd been raised in a good home.

  I have absolutely no right to grieve, Julieta thought. It is theirs entirely. How dare I.

  There were the other graves, faded rainbow mounds with stripes of evening shadow along their sides. There was Joseph, standing some distance away. There was that big empty sky. There was his truck, pulled over near the pavement. There was the highway, a station wagon passing slowly, the family inside turning their faces away from the two strangers in the cemetery.

  After a while it was time to go.

  She went to Joseph, stood in front of him, looking at him, letting him see her face naked with all the feelings. She slapped him once, so hard it smacked like a gunshot, and yet he barely flinched, not even enough to lose eye contact. She panted until she'd caught her breath, glad that part was over. Then she took his face between her hands, stood on tiptoe, and kissed the red blotch on his cheek. She held her lips there tenderly and long, as if it would draw all the hurt out of him. He put his hands on her shoulders, steadying her.

  Afterward, she just leaned her forehead against his chest. It didn't feel right, exactly, but really there was no one else. There never had been.

  47

  THERE WAS a glow in the distance: dangerous like a forest fire in the dark, something malevolent that could rush toward you and surround you and consume you. And there was an irritating insect that buzzed a harsh little song as it drilled into Cree's thigh.

  Startled, she brushed and slapped at the bug and half sat up before realizing where she was and what was happening. She was lying in one of the sleeping bags under the roof of the sheep shed. The fire was a tumble of embers. The sunlight was gone but for a dull, colorless brightness in the west, washing the dark landscape in a faint light that turned every feature a monochromatic blue-gray. The silence in all directions was the sound of pure loneliness.

  Right. Sheep camp. She had taken a nap. Ellen had lain down, too, but now was gone. With Tommy sleeping and Raymond and Dan taking their shift, Cree had opted to try to rest. She'd drifted off wondering how to tell Julieta about Tommy, her thoughts spinning in slow circles, going nowhere.

  The glowing dangerous thing was the battle between Tommy and his invader, always there, an emanation of psychic discord looming just out of view, sixty feet away. And the insect on her thigh was Edgar's cell phone in her pants pocket, ringing and vibrating. Ellen had told her that here on the higher ground, reception wasn't too bad.

  She opened it quickly and tugged out the antenna, her heart thudding in her chest.

  It was Julieta.

  "I was going to call you," Cree told her. "Where are you?"

  "I'm at Joseph's house. In Window Rock. I called Dr. Mayfield to get your number." Julieta's voice sounded subdued, deliberate. "How are things up there?"

  "I'm . . . I was just taking a rest. Tommy's aunt and uncle and cousin are in with him."

  "How is he?"

  "Not good, Julieta. I'm sorry." Cree's mind was scurrying, wondering how to break the news.

  Julieta went on as if she'd planned out what to say. "I called to tell you something I think you should know. Joseph brought me to my child's grave today. He
died about three years ago."

  Cree's breath went out of her. She couldn't reply immediately.

  "Joseph is being very kind. I'm screwed up about it. But I'm coping. I don't deserve to grieve, Cree. Somebody else knew him and loved him every day. I didn't." Julieta's voice was so gentle it seemed disembodied. It faded and swelled as if the breezes over all those miles of desert between them were blowing the signal astray, or lofting out and away some part of her feeling. There was no bitterness or anger in her tone.

  "So my first thought was, I was wrong about Tommy. Knowing him that way," Julieta said. "But . . ."

  She let the word hang there. Cree understood her reluctance to say the rest: But maybe I wasn't. Maybe I recognized him because the ghost in him is my son's ghost.

  She couldn't say it because on one hand it could sound like a real neurosis, a delusion that she couldn't let go of no matter what evidence contradicted it.

  On the other hand, Cree thought. The theory posed innumerable questions, but it would explain so much. Blood to blood, like to like. If true, it would give them the key to releasing the ghost.

  "Julieta, I'm so sorry. I know this is very hard for you. Thank you for letting me know. You're right, it's a very important fact. I understand exactly."

  "I knew you would." Very faint.

  "Wait, don't hang up! What was his name? How did he die? I don't mean to be so direct, but I . . . I need every bit of information I can get."

  "Robert. Robert Linn Dodge. He died of a congenital heart defect. He was sick for most of his life. Apparently he fought back hard. I don't know where he died, or the exact circumstances. I'll try to find out, if you want me to." Julieta stopped, then went on desperately, "Cree, he would have died anyway. Even if I hadn't . . . even if—"

  "Julieta, you have to come here. The ghost's response to you could be crucial. I need to see you interact. And if you're why it's here, you're the one who has to let it go. Can you come?"

  "Of course. When?"

  Cree looked around. The rising land to the east was a sweep of deep gray-blue, full of the humped black forms of junipers and boulders. Stars had begun springing out of the night sky. Far too late for anyone to come or go through this wilderness tonight.

  "The sooner the better. Tomorrow. Early as possible."

  She folded the phone away just as a circle of light edged around the back wall of the shed, bringing Ellen and Ray with it: They'd lit one of the Coleman lanterns. Ellen hung it from a nail and then sat down to stoke the fire. Ray tossed himself down near the fire pit and tipped the coffeepot to see what was left.

  "Still sleeping," Ellen said. "Dan's over there, but he's afraid to be inside with him." She looked very worried, and Cree knew why. Tommy hadn't eaten anything for two days. Physical exhaustion would only weaken him, give the ghost the advantage. Even while he slept, it fitted itself more closely to him, a hand working determinedly into a poorly fitting glove.

  "I'll go take over now," Cree told them. "I feel a lot better. You folks get some rest, okay? I'll call you if I need you."

  "I'm sorry," Ellen said. "My husband and his sister were supposed to come up to help out, but I guess they couldn't get here before it got dark. We're on our own for tonight."

  Ray dumped the coffee grounds on the edge of the fire pit and began preparing a new potful. "So I guess we're what you might call a skeleton crew," he joked darkly.

  A small scrabbling noise jolted Cree out of her drowse.

  She'd been sitting with her back to the far wall of the hogan, keeping vigil on Tommy and the shifting auras and moods that emanated from his sleeping form. Some hours must have passed, but she didn't dare lift her hand to check her watch. The only light was the faint reflected glow from the lantern over at the shed, coming through the window.

  It was just enough to see what made the noise: Tommy's right hand.

  Tommy lay on his left side, facing her with eyes shut, mouth agape, his breath coming in ragged snores. But the hand was awake. It flexed and stealthily slid along the floor to the leg of the little table beneath the window. When it encountered the leg, it recoiled, then returned to probe the shape of it. That was the scrabbling noise: fingernails against wood.

  Cree tried not to react outwardly. Inside, she felt an overpowering revulsion, the sense of the unnatural. A perversion, even by strange standards of the paranormal. The hand moved as though disembodied. It climbed the leg of the table, felt along its edge. When it encountered the corner of Tommy's notebook, it recoiled again.

  Tommy shifted in his sleep, rolling slightly so that the arm fell back to the floor. The hand lay palm up and motionless for a moment, like a stunned insect. Tommy's snores snagged and lost their rhythm. His breath seemed snarled in his throat, as if his tongue were choking him. Cree put her hands to the floor and rose to a crouch, ready to spring to his help if his breathing didn't resume.

  And, as if it had sensed her in the room, the hand roused itself again.

  This time the arm raised toward Cree and the hand made a beckoning gesture with two fingers. It trembled and shook and again seemed to beckon her closer. The movement appalled her. Tommy's head lay canted onto his pillow, his mouth wide and slack, eyes closed. And the thing was alert and beckoning.

  Without thinking, Cree took two hesitant steps toward it. Run! screamed her instincts. Surrender, she commanded herself. She felt time slow and confusion consume the dark room, and knew she must have hesitated because now Tommy's dark silhouette eclipsed the faint rectangle of window. He had risen from his bed.

  As he turned, she glimpsed the ghost's body around the outline of his shape, a faintly luminous limb bending momentarily, a shoulder emerging where it shouldn't be and then vanishing again. The dark form moved toward her. The desire to flee became intolerable, yet she still couldn't move.

  And then she realized he wasn't coming straight toward her. Tommy went to the door, east-facing as all Navajo doors were, walked face-first into it, groped it with his hands, opened it. Before Cree could react, the doorway was empty.

  Her reactions were delayed by indecision. By the time she got to the door, she could barely see his shape in the blue dark, walking east, up the gentle slope toward the higher ground. Cree debated calling for Ellen or Ray, but there was no sound from the sheep shed, and she assumed they were taking some much-needed sleep.

  More important, she didn't want to distract the ghost. The freakish intentional hand had given way to the perseverator, and it was living through its narrative now. She had to experience what the ghost was living through and glimpse the world it thought it was in. Instinctively, she sensed she was getting close to identifying it.

  She followed Tommy's puppeted body out into the darkness, keeping her physical distance yet extending all her senses toward it. Around them, a wind moved in the sagebrush as if scores of invisible creatures were scurrying furtively through, each suddenly tossing form igniting a fresh jolt of fear. The darkness seemed to flicker and flutter.

  The invisible auras of the ghost's moods waxed and waned like an aurora borealis. Fear? Definitely. Or, more accurately, trepidation. But that didn't impede the drive, the burning purpose that kept it moving. What else? Apology or remorse. That cocky self-confidence, too, almost a machismo, a sexualized braggadocio. But so forced, pumped up, so desperate or artificial. Garrett?

  Confusion and doubt, too, and a childlike neediness, seeking consolation or reassurance. And that relentless desire to overcome. Maybe a twelve-year-old boy determined to fight off the effects of the badly formed heart that was killing him, frightened, needing comfort?

  Robert? Robert Linn Dodge? she called to it in her mind.

  Tommy's body stumbled hard on a knee-high rock and went down. Cree's eyes had adjusted to the starlit dark, enough to see that when he got up, his movements were slack and disjointed. Not as if Tommy were fighting the ghost, but as if his body were simply too worn out from the days and nights of warring to obey.

  They were getting pretty far
from the hogan now. Cree could barely see the building's dark mass, a hundred yards back; the light from the lantern in the shed was mostly eclipsed by intervening junipers. She began having second thoughts about letting the narrative play itself out. It wouldn't be good to go too far in country neither she nor the ghost knew. There were cliffs here. Ellen and Ray might not hear a call for help.

  She picked up her pace to close the gap between them.

  Always east. Brother would have been heading east as he desperately tried to get back to the ravine. He'd be proud he'd caught one of the goats, maybe that was the cockiness, a young man proving his daring and worthiness. He'd be afraid of the approaching soldiers. He'd be apologetic for disobeying his father's orders not to go back down the ravine.

  They were getting too far away. Tommy's movements were weak, but the ghost seemed tireless. Cree couldn't wait any longer for a confrontation. Scrambling in the dark, she flanked the ghost at a distance and came around to head it off. She stopped ten feet away, directly in front of the dark form.

  "Shinnai?" she called out loud. She conjured in her mind the sense of the girl's mental world, her feeling for her brother.

  Tommy took several more toppling steps, stopped, and swayed uncertainly. Now all the ghost felt was doubt and fear. "What are you doing here?" he said breathlessly. Abruptly he put up his hands as if warding off a blow and immediately rage exploded him. He swung his fist at Cree and caught the side of her head. She didn't fall, but it knocked her off balance and rattled her and she tried to dodge him, but it was too late, she was moving too slowly. Tommy lunged again and she had to grab his arms. He growled like an animal, but there was little force in his efforts. They fell over and rolled, Cree turning her face away from the clawing hands, her mouth filling with grit.

  "Tommy!" she shouted. "Tommy, stop him!"

  Its movements faltered. She tried to push it away and partially succeeded, dragged her upper body out from under. Twisting to look as its fists thudded weakly on her back, she saw that Tommy's body appeared to be fighting with an invisible being. The ghost had drifted askew between worlds. In another few seconds it flailed hugely as pain exploded inside it. Its stomach, its chest, everything bursting. The body began convulsing in regular waves. Cree broke free, scrambled a few feet away, fell down as the pain consumed her. She rolled to look at the Tommy thing. It was fighting for its life. It couldn't seem to breathe.