Land of Echoes

36

Cree waited in the outer office as Julieta finished up with a student-parent conference. Across the room, a secretary pecked at a computer, paused, pecked again. From what Cree could hear through the half-open door, a worried mother had come to talk with Julieta about her daughter, who was very homesick and wanted to leave the school.

When they came to the door, Cree saw that the student was a moonfaced girl who barely looked old enough for high school. The mother was a young Navajo woman, pretty and professional looking, now glowing with relief or gratitude: Julieta must have found a way to set things right. Julieta kissed them both as they left and promised them that things would be okay. She looked much older, Cree thought. Worn.

"Such a sweet girl," Julieta said quietly. "A math prodigy. It's all her teachers can do to keep up with her. She's one of our full-timers, and she misses her baby sister. We just had to figure out a way to get her home on weekends. Look what she gave me-she made it herself. I'm so flattered. I just love it." It was a little garnet and turquoise brooch in the shape of a hummingbird, inexpertly made. Julieta pinned it to her blouse, patted it, then took a deep, resigned breath as if preparing herself for something. "I know we've got a lot to talk about. Would you mind going for a walk? I could really use some fresh air."

"Sure."

Julieta found a windbreaker and pulled it on as they left the building. They walked slowly away from the school to the west, their shadows behind them: Three-thirty, the sun was beginning to roll down the far side of the day. On the hilly land to the west, the scrubby trees seemed larger as their shadows darkened the near slopes.

"After you called, I talked to Joseph," Julieta said. "He's going to help us find Tommy. He's really the only one who can. He'll go talk to the grandparents today."

Cree detailed her concern about the doctors' treatment plans, then described her visit to the mine: Nick's attempt to mislead Joyce about the location of the mutilation site, Donny's anger and his threatening message.

Julieta shook her head, weary and unbelieving. "Everything's a mess, isn't it. Everything's coming apart. It's like a train wreck."

"It's looking dicey, yeah," Cree said. "But as my father used to say, 'It ain't over till it's over, and it's never over.'"

A wan smile.

"It would have to be Lynn, wouldn't it? Who told him about Tommy?" Julieta bobbed her head sadly. Cree had expected outrage, but to her surprise Julieta just chewed her lip and hunched herself into her windbreaker. "That poor woman. She doesn't have much, does she. She must be so desperate. I should have seen how bad it was with her."

"What does she have against you? She makes these veiled, dark allusions to your relationship with Tommy, your past… Could she know the story?"

"I have no idea, Cree. I hardly know her. All I can guess is that she resents my authority here. And I think she… she fancies Joseph. Envies my friendship with him."

That struck Cree as right. "So what does Donny think is going on? What's he so afraid of?"

"Donny's paranoid! He thinks I'm out to get him. It must have to do with his in situ uranium project. An unfortunate coincidence- Joyce bringing a Geiger counter and then mentioning Area Eighteen, he thought I sent you to spy on him. Area Eighteen is where they wanted to build the extraction plant. I don't know why he's so hot and bothered, but probably he's doing something illegal. It wouldn't be the first time. McCarty Energy is famous for its lousy record on safety and environmental compliance. Just like Garrett, Donny figures it's cheaper to buy off the inspectors than pay the cost of reclamation. A few years ago, OSHA took them to court for huge safety violations they'd been covering up for years. But I don't know what this one's about."

Clearly, she didn't care much, either. Everything about Julieta, her scuffing walk, the hunched shoulders, the resignation in her voice, radiated an affect Cree had seen only in the briefest of glimpses before. Something was breaking up inside her. She had abandoned hope and resistance. Curiously, Cree thought, she wore the mood beautifully. Surrender, that's what it was. Grace came with it. She put her arm through Julieta's and was pleased to feel her draw Cree's elbow against her side.

"Julieta, what can we do about Donny? If anything could ruin the school, this could. And he knows it. He wants to use it to bargain with you."

"For what? I don't have anything to bargain with. Not a thing. I'll call him. I'll do whatever he wants."

They walked on, shoulder to shoulder. They were already a good distance from the school, two women alone in the red-brown landscape of desert, the silvery blue sky. Julieta wasn't dressed for the outdoors. A little wind scurried along the plain, blowing their hair around and entwining Julieta's longer, darker curls with Cree's.

"I learned a lot about Garrett, anyway," Cree said, wanting to give her something, anything. "If I can get near Tommy again, I'll be better able to recognize him. If it is him, I mean."

Julieta nodded dubiously. "We need to talk about that," she said.

"About-?"

"Recognition. You had asked me how I recognized Tommy as my son."

Cree felt a sudden premonitory trepidation. "Right. Yes."

"It's a couple of different things. First, his records show him as a home birth, from the general area where I know my child went, the eastern rez."

"How about his birth date?"

"Well, the papers claim he was born about five months after I gave birth. But the discrepancy doesn't mean anything-the family might have taken their time reporting and filing, or fudging the date might have helped them claim the child was their own in some way. Allowed time for a supposed pregnancy to have occurred, I don't know."

"But it sure doesn't prove he is your son."

"No. It just puts him in the ballpark. The way I knew him, Cree, it was intuitive. You of all people can understand that, can't you? I need you to understand it. I felt it the moment I met him for the admissions interview. I just… felt it." Julieta pulled away a little and turned so she could look Cree in the eye. The look was pleading.

"What about his appearance? He doesn't seem to resemble you. Does he look like Peter Yellowhorse?"

Julieta's mouth made the saddest of smiles. "I keep telling myself he does, but the truth is, I can't remember. And I never had a photo of Peter, or I'd show it to you. I have memory, that's all. And it changes, it's astonishingly malleable. The best I can do is, he got a part in Dances with Wolves-playing a Sioux, of course. This was a few years later. Seeing him again upset me so much I had to leave the theater. But we could rent the video, if you want to get a look at him."

"That might be good-"

"But it has nothing to do with Tommy's appearance. It's just… here. She spread one hand against her chest and one on her stomach, inhaling and exhaling deeply, once. "It's something I feel here." Inside.

Cree nodded, knowing exactly what she meant. It was rationally indefensible, but it was the kind of instinctive knowing she trusted completely. She depended on it herself for every investigation. She'd never known it to be without some basis in reality.

They joined arms again and walked on. Their isolation on the bare earth of the undulating plain, under the endless sky, felt very private.

"I don't think of Peter," Julieta said. "This isn't about him, I don't hold anything against him anymore. He was right-we wouldn't have worked out. And I don't live in the past, I really don't, I've had other lovers since then. I live in the here and now and I've got far too much to do to mope around. It's just that when I try to figure out how… I got to this place, my life feels all… out of kilter. Like all the right pieces are there, but they're stacked wrong? The foundation is out of whack? And when I trace it back to where it went wrong, it's that period. Garrett, Peter. The baby. And I don't know how to stack it up right after that."

"But what's so out of kilter? You're beautiful, you're still young, you've got the school…?"

Julieta just scuffed along, pondering the ground in front of them.

A little while later, Julieta brought them around to face back toward the campus, and they stopped to gaze at it. The sun made the angles of the buildings sharp and their planes brilliant. It all looked bright and little and far away, a thing receding.

"There's just one other thing you should probably know," Julieta said sadly. Her affect was one of utter surrender, yet she spoke with great decision.

Again Cree felt a lurch, as if the ground beneath her feet had shifted. She tried to mask her burgeoning alarm as she searched Julieta's eyes and saw how deep this vulnerability and pain went. The liquid spark in the dark blue eyes was utterly naked.

"Tommy… he isn't the only one. He isn't the first."

"What?" Cree panted.

"There was a boy the second year. I wanted him to be my child. So badly. But he wasn't. There was even a girl last year, I thought maybe Joseph had misled me about my baby's gender to put me off the track. So you see, it's very complex. I'm kind of crazy. Joseph knows. He's very kind to me. But it's not fair of me to impose it on you, or the kids, anymore. I thought you should know."