Land of Echoes

24

Joseph Tsosie bumped his head on the door frame as he bumbled thick headed and banana fingered into his pickup. Morning at last, the prospect of some sleep. End of a long shift.

Julieta had called at around ten p.m. to tell him Tommy's symptoms had peaked again and that he'd been taken by ambulance to Ketteridge Hospital. She was afraid that she'd lost him now. He'd tried to console her but had to cut it short: He'd had patients waiting. Saturday night was drinking time on the rez. Those who needed it drove into Gallup or Farmington, pawned some family jewelry, put down a bellyful of booze, and got into accidents on the long drive back home. Or they opened up the bottle they'd provided themselves with earlier and got into fights or accidents or other mischief that left them in the emergency ward at some dark hour, where Joseph, or whoever was on shift, dutifully sutured their torn flesh or set their shattered bones or prepped them for internal surgery. Even now, eight o'clock Sunday morning, an old man was tottering around the parking lot of the Tribal Social Services building, blown like a tumbleweed on the random winds of ethyl-crazed impulse.

Joseph chided himself for his dark mood and reminded himself of his priorities: Hot shower. Bed.

The sun had just come up and was starting to burn its way through a high, thin ice haze. Along Route 12, where the red disk broke above the Manuelito Plateau, the bluffs wore pleated skirts of blue-black shadow. There were no other cars on the road, and the scattered houses were blank windowed and still. He turned on the radio, listened to the yammer of a commercial station, couldn't stand it, switched to a Sunday-morning Evangelical harangue and couldn't stand that either. He turned it off again and was grateful for the silence.

Tired as he always was, he relished these Sunday morning drives, especially in the autumn when dawn came late and he was there to see the rising sun. On a morning like this, it was easy to imagine this landscape as its first explorers had seen it, thousands of years ago: imponderably vast, humblingly ancient and full of mysteries. They'd have probed it cautiously, appraising the land's capacity to sustain life, alert for signs of water and game and enemies and portents, wary of the spirits who had first claim here. And that wasn't exclusively an Anasazi or Navajo perspective, you couldn't ascribe it to some local gene. Every people throughout the world had populated its pinewoods or deserts or ice fields, its rain forests or mountains or seacoasts with invisible beings that commanded that exalted form of fear called reverence. As a kid at St. Bonaventure's boarding school, he'd often asked his teachers why the Old Testament used the word "fear" to describe what you were supposed to feel about God, and he'd never gotten a satisfactory answer. Later, one kindly priest had explained the way perspectives had evolved in the New Testament, Christ's emphasis upon love between the Almighty and his creations. At the time, he'd found reassurance in that view.

But now, with what was happening to Tommy Keeday, he couldn't help thinking maybe the older texts had it right after all.

He wondered how the parapsychologist saw this stuff. She seemed to have sorted out her metaphysics in some way, forged a personal reconciliation between very divergent worldviews. He envied that equilibrium. For all his doubts about her, he also had to admit that she'd dealt very well with Tommy: sympathetic and responsive, yet never indulging in any of the politically correct walking on eggshells that you so often saw among whites pursuing altruistic motives among Navajos. Not even when Tommy had deliberately tried to prevail upon the liberal guilt reflexes he'd learned to expect from social service and medical types. Cree Black obviously had a talent for getting people to show themselves. Already she had induced Julieta to reveal the long-buried saga of Peter Yellowhorse, the divorce, the baby. It made Joseph's cheeks burn to think of anyone else knowing about the mistakes they'd made together sixteen years ago. Still, the parapsychologist's getting Julieta to talk about her past was a testament to her skills.

Not that it mattered, at this point: With Tommy gone from the school, Cree Black's talents or lack thereof might be irrelevant.

Driving on automatic pilot, he realized that he'd passed his turn into Window Rock. Not really an accident, he knew immediately. Thinking about Julieta's pleading last night made him realize that he had pressing business that took precedence over the need for sleep. He needed to find Uncle Joe Billie, ask him some questions. Given that it was a weekend, he knew where to find his mother's brother. Whether the old man would tell him anything, whether he was sober enough to understand the issues or felt like playing games today, was another matter.

He stopped at the Mustang station to gas up the truck and get a cup of coffee to go. Then he headed east on Route 264, the sun searing straight into his eyes as he left the Navajo Nation, entered the United States, and hit the highway for the drive to Gallup.

He shut off the engine in the rutted dirt lot across the highway from the flea market. Nine-thirty, it was too early for the big crowds, and the parking area was less than half full of pickups and station wagons. The hay sellers were doing a brisk business, though, tossing down bales from towering stacks on flatbed semitrailers to family pickups that nosed up against their flanks like foals to a mare.

Joseph crossed the highway to the dirt access road that ran around the market proper. Some of the smaller vendors were still arriving, moving their tables and racks and paraphernalia on dollies or garden carts. Whole families carried things: little girls carrying nested hand-woven baskets, boys wrestling toppling piles of cowboy hats or burlap sacks of potatoes, fathers and mothers struggling with racks of toys or Chinese-made tools or their own handicrafts. Already the air was filled with the smell of fry bread and roasting mutton, reminding Joseph that he hadn't eaten any breakfast.

Uncle Joe often set up in the first row of stalls, among some of the other herb sellers. But as Joseph scanned the row, he didn't see his uncle's weathered face. He stopped at one of the booths to ask a young woman if she'd seen Hastiin Joe Billie, and she said she thought maybe he'd come late and was around one of the side lanes. Joseph thanked her and left her table. The Gallup Flea Market covered many acres and included hundreds of vendors who sold everything from used engine blocks to watermelon juice, potatoes to livestock-castrating tools, snow cones to hand-woven blankets, plastic action-figure toys to saddles to computer components. When he was younger, it had included more local crafts, but now many of the vendors were small-time entrepreneurs who'd gotten a line on off-brand tools or cooking utensils, T-shirts, Chinese-made electronics, Mexican tourist goods, music CDs and cassettes. Still, there were plenty of family-run stands full of pottery and jewelry, piles of root vegetables, bags of herbs, goat-fat soap, wool and sheepskins and leather. From their rough hands and the reserve in their eyes, you could tell some of these people had come in from remote areas where crowds like this were unknown and the nickels and dimes they'd make here were big-time cash. This was how he imagined some bazaar in Cairo or Istanbul might look: tarp-covered stalls, piles of vegetables, stacks of boxes, food concessions with grills roasting meat or boiling vats of corn stew. There were some whites here, as well as Mexicans, Pueblos, Apaches, even a few Japanese guys and Pakistanis, but most of the vendors and clientele were Navajos. He looked at their faces and felt their collective anarchic energy with a familiar mix of pride and sorrow.

He found another herb vendor whose face he thought he recognized. "Yaateeh. Do you know where Joe Billie is today?" he asked.

"Maybe around back," the man answered.

Which meant it could take him a long time to find Uncle Joe. If strung end to end, the meandering rows of stalls would stretch a couple of miles. The thought made him feel weary and he decided he'd better still the complaining of his stomach before going any farther. He stopped at a likely-looking concession, an Airstream trailer fronted by a tarp-covered sitting area with four picnic tables. The roast mutton wasn't ready yet, so he ordered a bowl of stew, a couple of fry breads, and a cup of coffee, and when he got the food took it to a table where he could look out on the lane as he ate. Several booths down, one of the music sellers turned on a boom box, playing a CD of some local country-and-western band, amateurish but full of vigor. Joseph ripped a piece from the huge disk of bread, salted it, and wolfed it down. Time to catch his breath and fortify himself.

Anyway, before he talked to Uncle Joe, he needed another few minutes to gather his thoughts.

Besides pleading with him to tell her whether Tommy really was her long-lost baby, Julieta had begged him to help keep the parapsychologist working with the boy, to intercede with the grandparents or the doctors to keep her on as a consulting psychologist.

Which required he make a decision about Cree Black. As Tommy's primary physician, someone the grandparents trusted, a doctor in good standing at Ketteridge, he could play Roman emperor, give Cree a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down. Thumbs-down: He could recommend against her having access to the boy, and there would be little she could do about it. Thumbs-up, and they'd probably assent to her seeing him.

Two days ago, it would have been an easier decision: good-bye Dr. Black. But the parapsychologist's methods were not at all what he'd expected. Every time they spoke, she articulated her perspective so clearly and compellingly. And yet it was like nothing he'd ever heard of.

Well, not quite, he realized. Surprisingly, some aspects of her approach resembled the traditional Navajo healing process. Her belief in spirits capable of occupying a human being, that was part of it, and the way real reverence merged with superstition in her personal cosmology. It was also her emphasis on the patient's social environment. By probing the interpersonal relationships around the sufferer, Cree Black made the group part of the process-not unlike the complex Ways the old healers performed, where the whole community came to give the ritual and gave the patient their support. It was one component of the traditions he'd accepted as both defensible and, for some afflictions anyway, effective.

And she had an impressive resume, too. During a break yesterday morning, he had looked her up on the Internet and found a surprising number of references: advanced degrees, significant publications, lecturing, a prestigious postdoctoral research prize.

Joseph chuckled cynically, surprised at himself. He couldn't decide which factor influenced him most, but on balance, he decided, he was impressed with her and wouldn't mind seeing what she could accomplish with Tommy. At the very least, arranging for Cree Black to keep working with him would soothe Julieta, maybe discourage her from raising legal challenges to the grandparents' custody, or waging a private, hopeless war against the health-care system. Or otherwise staking claims on the boy that she couldn't defend and that would rip Tommy's world, and hers, apart.

But Cree Black's approach also created potential problems. The first was simply that her methods might not hold any promise for Tommy. The woman could be chasing vapors. Despite the baffling strangeness of his symptoms, Joseph still had to believe Tommy was suffering from a neurological or psychological problem that would ultimately need a clinical remedy. Cree Black could do worse than nothing; she could delay or misdirect the treatment that Tommy really needed. In that sense, the very penuasiveness that made her such a skilled interviewer and confidante could make her dangerous. Already, Julieta had bought completely into the idea that Tommy was indeed "possessed," and that the culprit was the nasty ghost of a too-familiar enemy, Garrett McCarty.

The other big problem was that Dr. Black's delving into the past could unearth trouble that was best left alone. It could plunge Julieta into self-doubt and self-castigation and the dangerous instability that he'd seen too many times over the years. Worse, Cree might force to the surface secrets that would expose Joseph himself. Things he'd done that he couldn't forgive himself for, let alone ask Julieta to forgive.

Joseph's appetite faltered at the memories, but he made himself eat, scooping bites of stew with a chunk of bread.

He 'd done his best to help Julieta, but they'd both been so young, so naive. It had rapidly gotten so out of control-the progression of mistakes and deceptions that culminated in the decision to give up her baby. How stupid he'd been to think she could get over that! He should have put his foot down: Julieta, forget about what Garrett has done to you. Forget about fighting for a favorable divorce settlement. Don't accuse and defame him in court, don't try to hold on to any of his property. Don't give him one more reason to hate or resist you, or any more of a grudge to settle. Just get free of him, as fast and easy as possible, even if it means you end up penniless. Keep the baby, let your new life start now.

There are other alternatives, he should have said.

Like what? What other alternatives had there been? That's what he'd never articulated. That's where he'd really failed her.

But there were three words he'd had no right to say: You and me.

What could he have offered? Be with me. I'll claim I'm the father, I'll take care of you and the baby. I'll take the heat from McCarty and protect you from him with my life if I have to.

He had come very close, but it hadn't been possible. At first, she had been deeply in love with Peter Yellowhorse, and for all either of them knew Peter might have come back to her. She'd also been afraid, and blinded by anger and fear, and deeply disillusioned; he couldn't have offered himself without seeming to exploit her confusion and desperation. And then she'd been fighting free of two different but equally devastating relationships with men-the last thing she needed was another male making demands or claims on her. What she'd needed was a friend. And she'd looked to Joseph to be that.

It had been a simple choice, really. But in trying, he'd made some mistakes of his own. Terrible mistakes.

Anyway, he hadn't been free, either. When he'd first encountered the beautiful young volunteer at the hospital, he'd been still tangled in the emotional and situational coils of his own divorce process. In 1984, he was twenty-eight, married for six years, not long out of medical school and just beginning to come to grips with the way his years at Johns Hopkins had changed him. Wondering why he'd married Edith Blanco. Realizing that while she was a good person, they were too different; he'd married her during his last semester at UNM as much out of insecurity as affection, a young man intimidated by his pending leap into the unknown of the urban East Coast and desperate to anchor himself to his home place and people. When he'd first met Julieta, he'd already spent a year on the uneasy verge of ending it with Edith.

By the time he'd divorced and she'd divorced and they had each regained a vague semblance of emotional equilibrium, the habits of distance had set in. There were things he was afraid to tell her. He got the sense she was afraid, too-of her own mistakes, maybe, afraid to repeat them with him. In the intervening years, the occasional other relationships had come and gone, never feeling right for either of them, confusing and delaying. The timing never right.

He'd let eighteen years pass since he'd first met her. The worst mistake of all.

The boom box down the row went quiet for a moment and then began playing Navajo chants, sung by a ragged chorus of hoarse voices accompanied by a solitary drum. The monotonous wailing irritated Joseph and reminded him why he'd come here. He mopped up the remains of his stew, ate the last bite of bread, and drank off his coffee. He threw away the paper plate and cup and continued on through the market.

Joe Billie was unusually tall for a Navajo, but also unusually thin, as if his extra height had been attained by stretching a shorter man. He wore the standard uniform of men of his generation-jeans, cowboy boots, western shirt, and cowboy hat- and he had the gaunt, seamed face of a man who had spent a lot of time outdoors. He'd gone to college on the GI Bill and had worked as a rural livestock veterinarian until he'd etired at sixty-five, eight or ten years ago. Though he'd served in the marines during the Korean War, had studied modern medical theory, and had married a Catholic, he'd been drifting back toward a rediscovered Navajo traditionalism for as long as Joseph could remember, and after retirement he'd used his extensive contacts to build a part-time profession as an herbalist. There had always been something of the huckster about Uncle Joe, and Joseph was never quite sure how seriously he took his latest vocation.

Joseph found him talking to a short, squat woman who carried a number of plastic shopping bags in one hand and restrained an impatient toddler with the other. When Uncle Joe saw Joseph, he winked through the cigarette smoke snaking up from the butt between his lips, but he didn't interrupt his discussion with his customer. They were talking about how to prepare some poultice or potion.

Waiting, Joseph pretended to look over Uncle Joe's wares, the rows of ziplock baggies full of crushed leaves, dried berries, chips of bark, shreds and chunks of roots, corn pollen, mineral powders. He made a covert assessment of Uncle Joe. Behind the table, Joe Billie kept a couple of aluminum lawn chairs and an upturned plastic milk crate that held a transistor radio, some magazines, a pack of cigarettes, and the telltale brown paper bag molded to the shape of a bottle.

The woman told Uncle Joe good-bye, and the old man waved at the child before turning his yellow eyes to Joseph.

"Yaateeh, Nephew." The seams of his face folded to produce a smile.

"Aoo' Yaateeh, Uncle. A good weekend?"

"Not so good. Tourists are mostly gone. I'm about done for the year." Uncle Joe looked up and down the way, didn't see any imminent customers, and sat down. He twisted to the side to clear a pile of miscellany off the second aluminum chair, then beckoned to Joseph. "I was just going to eat something. You eat yet? There's extra."

"I just had breakfast. You go ahead, I'll watch and comment on your manners. Where's my aunt?"

A shrug. "Off with some friends, looking at potato peelers or something. I wish she'd come back soon, it's her turn to spell me and I have to take a piss." Uncle Joe began his meal with the appetizer of a quick swig from the paper bag. Then he unwrapped a grease-spotted paper towel and began to gnaw on a chunk of mutton folded into fry bread.

Joseph went around the table and sat. They didn't say anything for a few minutes as Uncle Joe chewed his food, took hits from the bottle, and watched the passing crowd. When he was done he lit another cigarette and looked at Joseph from the side of his face.

"Nice warm day today. Good for my old bones. Used to be colder this time of year. Maybe this global warming business is not such a bad thing."

Joseph smiled. "Let's hear you say that in July when it's so hot your earwax melts."

Uncle Joe scanned the sky as if he could see the climate up there. "Yeah, we haven't seen you around here all summer," he said mildly. "Your mother says you don't go see her, either."

"Busy. Too busy. You know how it is. Sometimes it seems you take care of everybody but your own family. I'll go see her next week."

Uncle Joe nodded. "That's a good idea. Hey, I got a new truck. Dodge double cab. In hock up to my ears, but I'll be dead before I finish paying it off, so why not."

"Only way to go, double cab," Joseph said. He looked out at the crowd.

Uncle Joe nodded again and then waited, smoking in silence. By now he'd be aware that Joseph had something on his mind, but he was giving his troubled nephew the time he needed to open the topic.

"Something has come up," Joseph admitted.

The old man bobbed his head.

"Uncle Joe, I need some information that only you know."

The head stopped moving. "Huh. Long time ago. Why is it important now?"

"You know the school where I treat the kids sometimes?"

"Julieta McCarty's school. For smart Navajo kids. Of course I know it."

Joseph shifted uncomfortably between the arms of the lawn chair.

"There's a student there with a bad problem. He's got a… a form of seizure activity that's very unusual."

"You want medical advice or spiritual guidance?" Joe Billie said chidingly. "Those, I can give you, sure. But history advice, we made a deal on that. I kept my part of the deal. You still have to keep yours."

"Things change, Uncle! He's fifteen now. Maybe there comes a time when a kid needs to know the truth about where he came from. Who his parents really were."

Uncle Joe made an unconvinced noise.

"He's from up east of Sheep Springs. Where I remember you used to work, back when I was just coming into practice." Joseph turned to observe the old man's reaction, but the maze of seams was utterly unreadable. "I've met the grandparents at the hospital a couple of times. They say they know you."

"Like you say, I used to work up there. Probably anybody with livestock on the eastern rez knows me."

Frustrated, Joseph lowered his voice: "This boy has a severe problem, like nothing I've ever heard of. It's mystified the hospital doctors. We need to know his real medical background. If we're going to look at the possibility of congenital factors or cranial trauma, we need to know his birth history. Right?"

"Julieta thinks it's her boy. She's pressuring you to tell her, and she doesn't know you don't know."

"That too. Look, Uncle, I wouldn't ask if it wasn't important. I'm asking as a physician."

Uncle Joe thought about it, taking a longer swig from the bottle and then making a face at it as if the taste displeased him. The crowd shuffled past, and an old woman stopped to inspect Uncle Joe's wares. Neither of them said anything until she'd moved on.

"Tell me about this boy's problem," Uncle Joe said at last.

Quietly, Joseph detailed Tommy Keeday's symptoms: the convulsions, the confusion of his body parts, the insensitive arm, the asynchronous breathing. He mentioned Sam Yazzie's observation that when it came upon Tommy it seemed to mesmerize or paralyze the other boys, and he immediately regretted it: The last thing he wanted was to suggest anything supernatural, get the old man prattling about superstitions. He finished up quickly, careful to avoid mentioning that they'd brought in a Seattle parapsychologist to look into it.

"Bad," Uncle Joe said. His yellow eyes floated moist in their sockets, still expressionless. "Bad business. Dangerous for you."

" Uncle-"

"I'll tell you something, Joseph," the old man hissed. He looked quickly around to see if anyone was close enough to overhear and then went on almost inaudibly: "One time I met a guy people said was a witch. In your world, you don't know guys like this. And you don't want to. You look in their eyes and you can see one minute they're one thing, next minute they're something different. They're crazy and sick like a dog with rabies. They can make other people crazy, too. I've seen it."

Joseph ignored the narrowing eyes and rasping voice, and persisted, "His name is Tommy Keeday. His parents were killed in a car crash about six years ago. Keeday, Keedah," he repeated, adding the more traditional pronunciation. He watched his uncle's face carefully, hoping to see a reaction to the name. But either it meant nothing to the old man, or he was truly a master of the poker face.

Uncle Joe stared at him for a full minute. "Here comes your aunt," he said finally. "Maybe we should take a walk. If I don't take a piss, I'm going to embarrass my wife in public. I'll show you the new truck."

Joseph greeted Margaret Billie, a hardy, pretty woman in her midsixties with her graying hair knotted behind her head and bound with strips of fabric. She wore a traditional outfit she admitted was intended to help sell herbs, a calf-length dress decorated with an embroidered bodice and set off by a handsome silver crucifix and turquoise necklaces. They exchanged courtesies and news of relatives for only a moment before Uncle Joe started walking off by himself and Joseph apologized and followed. Aunt Margaret took her seat behind the counter, waving understandingly as Joseph looked back.

They walked up the lane for a bit, then cut between concessions, across the next row, and again between booths to the vendor parking lot. Uncle Joe found his way to a massive new Dodge Ram with spotless burgundy and silver paint, looked quickly around, and urinated in its shadow. When he was done he lit another cigarette and turned to Joseph.

"Power windows, power locks, power mirrors," he said. "Power seats that go every which way. You want me to show you?"

"No, Uncle."

"Didn't think so." Uncle Joe chuckled, as if relieving himself had restored his sense of humor. Or maybe it was just the booze starting to hit him, Joseph thought. The old man walked around to the back of the truck and took a seat on the bumper, tipping himself cautiously back against the tailgate. A hundred yards away among the parked vehicles, a group of teenagers had gathered around a jacked-up muscle car and were listening to rock and roll from its speakers.

"I'm an old drunk, idn't it?" Uncle Joe said.

Surprised, Joseph didn't answer.

"Been a drunk most of my life. But I never stole and never got into fights, never had a car accident. Never shamed my family that way. Stayed married, took care of my kids. Old drunk, but could be worse, idn't it? Cancer will kill me before the booze does." He frowned accusingly at his cigarette and kept the scowl as he looked at Joseph. "Your mother is a strong woman, she did a great job with you kids after your father died. Nobody could have done better. But sometimes a young man needs an older man to talk to. About his problems. About his life. Why don't you talk to your uncles, Joseph? Not even your Uncle Joe Billie, whose name your mother honored by giving it to you?"

Joseph felt the skin of his face, not so much hot as exposed, naked. "I don't know, Uncle."

"Sure you do. So do I." The rheumy eyes in their whorls of wrinkles stayed steady on Joseph's. He was talking about his overeducated nephew's ambivalence and shame, and the shame of being ashamed, and the conflict between reason and magic, belief in modern science and respect for tradition, the whole difficult knot for which Joseph knew no solution.

Frustrated, Joseph scuffed the ground, trying to think of a way to explain it in terms Uncle Joe would comprehend. "I don't understand why if somebody comes to you with a sick cow you'd prescribe surgery or an antibiotic and never think twice about it. But for a man you'd prescribe a Sing."

"Wouldn't treat a cow the way I'd treat a horse, either. Different anatomy, different body chemistry, different diseases- need different kinds of treatment, right? Same way, a man's a different thing. A man has special parts that need a special kind of cure." Uncle Joe tapped his head and his heart meaningfully, then laughed at his own lecturing tone. "Besides, I'm a DVM, not an MD. State catches me treating humans, they'd lock me away for sure."

Uncle Joe chuckled at the thought, then the wrinkles swarmed into a frown again. He waved away the argument as a digression and returned to his thread of thought. "So, in your whole life, you came to me one time, fifteen years ago. I helped you. Didn't I earn your respect then?"

"Yes. Very much so. I am indebted to you."

"Okay. So I'm going to call this visit the second time in your whole life. I'm going to tell you what I think you should hear, but maybe not what you want to hear. Because I have to cram a lifetime of being a good uncle into two times. About this boy, I won't warn you again about ghosts or witches, you've heard it all before from old fogeys like me and you don't believe it, what's the use? But I have two secrets for you. From an old man who some people think knows something."

"Okay…"

Joe Billie looked a little unsteady on the bumper as he beckoned Joseph toward him with a gesture from his cigarette. There was a glint in his eye, mischief or command. Closer, Joseph could smell both the stale funk of metabolized booze and the sharp tang of fresh whiskey that surrounded him.

"I'm full of shit," Uncle Joe rasped quietly. "I'm completely full up of shit. And Navajos are full of shit. Every one of them, all the things they do and believe, full up to here with it. Disorganized, can't run their own public services. Politicians in Window Rock corrupt and full of themselves. Old people with their crazy superstitions, kids all spoiled, watching too much TV, doing drugs. Idn't it? This I believe, just like you. But now for the big secret, Joseph: Everybody is full of shit! Anglos, Mexicans, French, Jews, Chinese, these Arabs-they're equally full of it! The way they live. What they think. Their old beliefs. The way they treat each other. No more and no less than the Dine."

The old man leaned back against the tailgate and drew on his cigarette with a hard glint of satisfaction in his eyes, as if having delivered this drunken pearl he'd accomplished a great deal.

Despite his reflex to dismiss it as the sorry rambling of an aged alcoholic, Joseph felt a surprising shiver, as if hidden in the cynical logic of the message, buried in the human mountain of shit, were the seeds of liberation.

"Okay, and I have one more for you. You're worried about something else than the health of this boy. And you should be. You can't just treat the symptom, can you? Won't help. It's about the kid, but it's about you and Julieta McCarty, and you're scared of it."

Joseph reeled back a step, as if his uncle's words were punches. Uncle Joe turned his attention to his cigarette, tapping it with great care against his chrome trailer hitch. It was a respectful gesture, Joseph saw, the uncle prodding his troubled nephew yet giving him the privacy to react without being observed.

"He wasn't your baby?" Uncle Joe asked softly. "Sometimes I wondered."

"No!" Joseph was appalled at his bluntness, no doubt yet another indication of alcohol's erosion of his character. "Definitely not!" he said through his teeth. "This would have all come down differently, you can bet your life on it."

"So why should you care so much? This Tommy, one more sick kid, plenty of those. Why's this one your problem?"

"I made some mistakes, Uncle," Joseph whispered, surprised at himself.

The gray head bobbed, Uncle Joe's yellow eyes still concerned with the cigarette.

"I did some… wrong things. I lied to her. And some other things. I don't want her to find out! And I need to fix it somehow."

"Fix the boy? Or fix her? Fix you? Fix you and her?" Now the old man caught his eye, merciless. "You're a doctor. Got to be specific in your diagnosis if you want the right medicine. So, what needs fixing?"

All of it, Joseph thought. All of us. Everything.

Uncle Joe gave him a long moment, and when it was clear no answer was forthcoming he stood up creakily, tossed down his cigarette, and ground it out beneath his pointed toe.

"This damn enlarged prostate," he mourned. "Size of a watermelon by now. Have to piss every ten minutes." He made his way unsteadily to the side of the truck, where he turned away and unzipped. Over his shoulder, he called back, "I'll think about old Keedays with a boy, up in that area, see if I even know who you're talking about. Meantime, you think about what I told you, you come back to me when you know what needs fixing. Then maybe I can help you."

The old man's words had the tone of finality. As if to emphasize it, he took Joseph's arm and, walking with the exaggerated care of the aged or just the very inebriated, led him back into the bustle of the market.