Land of Echoes

13

Another pickup truck ride. Every bump in the gravel banged up through the suspension of Dr. Tsosie's Ford and up Cree's spine to be delivered like a hammer blow on the inside of her forehead. She had gone to bed determined not to take the time for a visit to the hospital, but this morning as she'd bent to look for her shoes a sick red-purple haze of pain suddenly filled the room, and she'd changed her mind. She had agreed readily when Dr. Tsosie insisted she accompany him to the hospital in Fort Defiance.

Joseph's first act upon arising had been to inspect Tommy, and when he'd assured himself that the boy was stable he'd looked Cree over with the same thoroughness. Then he'd taken her to the school cafeteria, where along with a handful of weekend staff they'd grabbed a breakfast of scrambled eggs, bacon, and toast. Julieta didn't join them; Joseph said she was probably out riding-it was what she did when she needed to think.

Now the two of them drove in silence as an ebullient sun bounded up from the mesa, promising a brilliant day as open and guileless as the night had been cloaked and full of dire things. Joseph seemed content to ride next to this stranger without making small talk, and Cree didn't mind. There was a lot to think about.

The problem was that any impressions she might have received had been muddled by the pain, which had obstructed any empathic resonance with Tommy and whatever had invaded him.

Inspecting her memory of the movements of his hand and that awful wink, she'd decided that the being now resident in Tommy was not some unknown category of entity-some relief there, maybe-but had once been human. She couldn't say why she thought that, except that she'd felt seen by it, felt its rude self-awareness glimmering there, enough to feel its similarity to her own. The eerie movements of the hand and arm suggested intentionality, some level of awareness of itself and its circumstances. But she'd garnered nothing of its character, identity, origin-or, crucially, its motivations.

No, the few insights she'd come away with had little to do with the boy.

One observation had to do with the way Joseph had dealt with Julieta when he'd arrived last night. The moment he was confident Tommy was resting safely and that Cree's injury wasn't serious, he'd gone to Julieta. He took her by the shoulders and with one hand swept the loose hair away from her face so he could study her. She looked like hell, exhausted, eyes puffy from crying, but as she gazed into his face her unguarded expression revealed how relieved and grateful she was to have him there. Joseph had first lightly touched her scraped cheek, and then his hand had turned and he'd delicately brushed the back of his fingers along her jawline before he turned away. It lasted only an instant, but even through her pain Cree could see that though the first touch had been a physician's, the second had been much more.

These two people knew each other well and cared deeply about each other.

Another was, irrelevantly, about Lynn Pierce. She was pleasant and certainly competent, but she radiated a sense of tension, a hypervigilance and — sensitivity. Some internal warring was going on, and though it made sense that the nurse would be keyed up with a patient like Tommy in her care, Cree felt intuitively there was more to it. For reasons Cree couldn't guess, a good measure of that odd, sideways hyperalertness seemed directed toward Julieta and Joseph.

One final insight concerned Julieta-Julieta and Tommy. Unquestionably, Julieta was a dedicated educator, deeply committed to the well-being of her students. But there was also some special connection between the two, much more than the concern called for by professional obligations or general altruism. It was something Cree felt achingly in her own belly whenever she saw them together, heard in Julieta's voice as she tried to comfort him. It awakened her own yearnings, the feeling she felt around Hyacinth and Zoe: the DNA-deep calling to have a child, to love and nurture. Julieta's concern grew out of instincts and longings that deep and irresistible.

That thought suggested another set of questions. If Julieta wanted children, why didn't she have them? It couldn't be for want of willing males. If Cree knew one thing about men and women, it was that nature abhorred a vacuum, and that a woman so beautiful and vivid would attract the attentions of any man who saw her. Julieta had spoken in passing about other relationships, but there had to be a reason why she'd never remarried in the many years since her divorce from Garrett McCarty.

The sudden smooth hum of the truck tires on pavement brought Cree out of her musings. They had made it to Indian Route 12, and now Joseph turned north, leaving behind the dust plume that had trailed them since they'd left the school. He maintained an impassive face as he drove. The hands that gripped the steering wheel were long fingered and neatly manicured, the competent hands of a physician. Cree wished with sudden intensity she could break through to him, enlist him as an ally.

"Dr. Tsosie-can we talk?"

"If you like."

"My process is difficult to accept at first. But it's worked for me and for the benefit of many others. If you and I can cooperate, it'll really help. If we can't, it'll really get in the way."

"It may become moot. Another night like last night and he can't stay at the school anymore."

"I understand. But the pattern so far is that there's an interval between crises, right? If I can have even a few days with him, I can make progress. With your help."

He stayed quiet for a long moment. "A month ago, if somebody like you came here, I'd have advised Julieta to throw him off the grounds."

"If one of the kids got sick and asked for a Hand-Trembler or a Singer, would you throw him off, too?"

He looked at her more closely. It wasn't a long and confrontational gaze, but a short, lateral look of appraisal. Tsosie was a handsome man, with deep brown eyes that seemed to take in the sunlight and give it back, warm and clear. The reserve she sensed in him was not one of arrogance or uprightness, not even a product of his skepticism; it struck her as a habit born of a desire to deliberate, to show respect, to assert mutuality.

"Depends," Tsosie said at last. "On whether I thought he'd do some good or not."

"Can you give me the same benefit of the doubt?"

"You're here, aren't you?"

She felt like thanking him but didn't yet know what he was giving his highly conditional approval to. "The problem is," she said reluctantly, "I'm going to ask all kinds of questions that seem irrelevant and intrusive and impolite."

He chuckled with resigned amusement. "I'm a physician. I ask people about how they're peeing and pooping. I ask women what their period's like and men how their sexual functions are working. And Tommy-in the last three weeks, I'm sure he's heard it all. After last night, he'll be willing to answer you."

"I wasn't thinking only of Tommy."

He waited for her explanation, but she wasn't ready to articulate it. There was too much to explain: That every human experience, normal or paranormal, took place in a larger context. That to understand Tommy she had to know the situation here-all the layers, the reasons for the doubleness she'd felt ever since she'd arrived. That there had to be a reason why he started experiencing the possession only since he'd arrived at Oak Springs School, not at his prior school or his home, and that maybe one of the reasons the hospital doctors had never witnessed his symptoms was that the entity was spatially anchored in this anonymous patch of desert. Or limited to manifestation within the constellation of personalities, the interpersonal dynamics, surrounding Tommy at the school.

As she hesitated, trying to find the right starting place, Joseph slowed the truck and swerved to the side of the road. They were approaching a trio of people standing on the shoulder, a young Navajo couple and a little girl of about four. All three wore jeans and quilted nylon jackets of different colors; the man stood with one hand up and displaying something green, while the woman sat on a pair of large, narrow plywood boxes, clasping the little girl on her lap. When Joseph stopped the truck, the man came around to the driver's window. They exchanged a few words in what Cree assumed was Navajo-clearly a tone language like Chinese but with odd glottal stops and an underlying warm buzz like a hive of honeybees. The man put his hand through the window and Cree saw he held a one-dollar bill, which Joseph waved away with a smile. In another moment, the little family had loaded the boxes and had climbed into the bed of the truck beside them. When they were settled, the man knocked on the window and Joseph started off. The woman smiled as the wind came around her and lifted her thick ponytail.

"On their way to the Chihootsoo market in Window Rock," Joseph explained. "Going to sell their jewelry to tourists. Truck wouldn't start today."

In the side mirror, Cree could see the little girl, sticking her hands out to play with the wind. The mother's face was bright with cold as she held her daughter against her body. Her husband lit a cigarette with difficulty, put his lighter away, and slouched down with his cowboy boots up on the boxes.

"What can you tell me about Tommy? Not medically-his family history?"

Joseph's brow rippled as he deliberated. "He comes from a rural area north of here. He's always lived way out in the sticks. His family still lives partly by herding, so he grew up with sheep, goats, horses. His parents died about six years ago-as he said, a car crash while his father was drunk. So he's been living with his grandparents. He's always been in boarding schools because busing him every day would be impossible for the public schools-his home's too far out and the roads are too bad. It's not unusual on the rez. I went to boarding school-when I was his age, most kids did. Nowadays the roads are better, more people live in towns, so most kids go to public schools."

"How did he happen to come to Oak Springs?"

"Julieta has a recruiter who goes to the other schools and asks about kids with special talents and needy circumstances. Julieta's a good fund-raiser, so she's got scholarships to offer. The recruiter talked to him and his grandparents and they put together a deal with the state."

"You've known her for a long time, haven't you?"

"Yes," he answered. It was clear Cree's change of tack had caught him by surprise.

"From before she started the school?"

"Does it matter?"

"I wondered if you knew her well enough to tell me why Tommy is so important to her."

Joseph's face remained impassive, but Cree got the sense she'd offended him. Behind them, the little girl was laughing as she found wisps of straw in the truck bed and let them go into the slipstream. One arm around the girl's waist, the mother used her other hand to rummage for something in her shoulder bag. The father looked asleep, battened down against the wind.

After a time, Joseph said, "Ask Julieta about Julieta."

His answer was not a dodge but a correct and courteous response, Cree realized. He was telling her that it was Julieta's decision how much to tell Cree, not his. And at least he didn't try to hide behind the "good educator" excuse. Cree was tempted to inquire if he'd answer questions about Joseph Tsosie but decided not to push her luck.

"So, based on your contact with him, can you tell me what kind of person Tommy is? I mean… what does he want? What does he like? What does he want to be when he grows up?"

"If I'd seen Tommy outside of the current situation, I'd describe him as a pretty normal Navajo kid from the rez in 2002. Aside from his high IQ-emotionally, I mean."

"Which means-?"

"Which means he's not sure who he is or what he really wants. All these kids, they watch TV and go to the movies, they walk around with their headsets on, listening to CDs. They think they want to be 'normal' Americans. Which means white. They don't know what it means to be Dine."

"So… what does it mean to be Dine?"

Joseph grunted softly. "To a lot of them, it means being a loser. Being a drunk. Being a hick with sheep shit on his boots and no future. If they hear any history at all, it sounds like a lot of superstition and whining and a bunch of illogical prohibitions and taboos."

He seemed to reconsider as he slowed the truck for a little flock of sheep that milled across the road ahead. Once the stragglers had made it safely onto the shoulder, he frowned and shook his head. "No, I take it back, Tommy's not typical. The typical kid comes from a government housing complex in a town and goes to public school-starts closer to the middle, the place where Navajo and white America are already mixing. Tommy comes from the extremes. He's gone to modern boarding schools, but he was raised in a traditional home. He's helped take care of his family's sheep, listened to his grandfather tell the old stories, lived without electricity or running water when he was little. So he knows more about the old way of life than the typical kid. Which is probably why he's trying so hard to get away from all that, dissociate himself from it."

"Most kids go through identity confusions at his age," Cree suggested.

"For Tommy it's worse. His parents are dead. He's got an exceptionally hungry mind. Look at his artwork and you can tell he needs to know where he comes from, how life works, what really matters. He can't get answers from his parents, and he resents them as much as he loves them. Same as with his Navajo heritage."

Cree thought back to the rap T-shirt, the close-shaved head. The pain behind her eyes was mounting, but even through the red throb she sensed from Joseph's intensity that she had touched upon something huge and troubling. Tommy wasn't the only one with a dissonant sense of his heritage; Joseph, for all his accomplishment and self-possession, was divided, too. Big forces came together here. What she felt was a tiny part of the great historical collision between Native American and European culture. Clearly that crash, though four hundred years old, was reverberating still in Dr. Joseph Tsosie. And in Tommy Keeday.

The thought sobered her, and she was suddenly aware of how little knowledge she brought to any aspect of this problem. She felt like asking what being Dine meant to Joseph Tsosie. Then, humbled, realized she lacked the insight to probe him any further.

They drove into the strip in Window Rock and dropped off their passengers at the parking lot where dozens of people had set up booths and racks to sell their wares. Continuing north on 12, they passed more of the lovely stone forms Cree had admired on her way in, and then veered away into open land again. They passed a cemetery with American flags flying on almost every grave-the Navajo Veterans Cemetery, according to a flaking sign. The graves were knee-high mounds of rock rubble, topped by festoons of plastic flowers, colorful trinkets, flags, and the standard government- issue white tab of a vet's headstone. Beyond the barbed-wire fence that marked the cemetery's formal confines, a bulldozer had pushed aside the brush, cutting a narrow red-dirt slash that was entirely filled by a single long row of graves, bright and forlorn as an abandoned circus.

As if the cemetery reminded him of something he'd been wanting to say, Joseph cleared his throat deliberately. "I want to be very clear about Tommy's status. I've generally agreed with Julieta that the IHS or state mental health systems may not know what to do with him, so I've been willing to take some risk and let him come back to the school. But I'm not as pessimistic about the system as Julieta is, and as his primary physician, I have to see he receives appropriate care. Which means one more crisis and he's got to go back to the hospital. I gave instructions to Lynn Pierce to that effect. She doesn't call me first. She calls an ambulance."

"And what happens to him then?"

"It's up to his grandparents. Personally, I'd recommend long-term treatment somewhere." He paused, then articulated his point: "You may or may not have access to him. The hospital probably won't let you treat him in any way. The grandparents, it's hard to say, but I'd guess not."

Cree thought about it, feeling headachy and overwhelmed. She agreed with Joseph, but she was also sure that no conventional methods would remove the invader from Tommy. If she and Edgar couldn't have access to him, he might never be freed of the thing. The whole situation put even more pressure on her investigation.

"Thank you for being candid with me, Joseph," she said at last.

He nodded, and they didn't say any more as he drove into Fort Defiance and pulled up in a new-looking hospital complex. There were trees here, Cree saw, and beyond the hospital grounds residential streets with actual green lawns and paved sidewalks. Joseph shut off the truck, and before Cree could gather her bag he'd come around to open her door. She let him help her down.

"We'll get you to the ER. I'll leave you there, but I'll check in later to make sure you're okay. Ask for Dr. Bannock, he should be on today. If you're released, you can rest up here until I can drive you back tonight. Or Julieta can come up and get you." He looked at her for her response, steady brown eyes, and she nodded.

Joseph had slept for at most three hours, and he was about to begin a long day of caring for others. Yet he looked fit for it, weary but capable and in command of himself.

Abruptly she knew why Lynn Pierce and Julieta took such comfort from him. She felt an almost overpowering desire to tell him how much she appreciated his help, his innate courtesy and restraint, his calm, his concern for Julieta and Tommy. But she didn't know him well enough to tell him. It would only embarrass him and possibly offend him.

Instead, she raised one hand and lightly took his arm. If he sensed any intent besides an unsteady woman's need for assistance, he didn't show it. They went up the sidewalk like that, and Cree saw their reflections in the hospital's big glass doors: one beat-up-looking Anglo parapsychologist looking very much out of her depth, shyly holding the arm of a tired but trim Navajo doctor who wore a bemused expression as he thought ahead to his day's rounds.