Land of Echoes

38

The Keeday homesite was about four miles off the road they'd come in on, a driveway consisting of parallel wheel tracks meandering between rotting buttes and over rolling swells of bare hardpan. Uncle Joe skillfully navigated the truck over the rough ground, sometimes at no more than a walking pace. As with most rural Navajos, the various units of the Keedays' extended family had lived for generations within shouting distance of each other, so the place was about what Joseph expected: a scattering of hogans, shacks, sheds, sheep pens spread over a half mile or so. But the deaths of Tommy's parents and relocations of other kin had left the grandparents and Tommy alone on the old place, and all but the grandparents' current residence were unused and falling apart.

The old Keedays' home consisted of a small, aluminum-clad trailer fronted by a tin-roofed, open lean-to. Close by stood a log hogan in good repair. Between buildings, a little chipboard shed housed a gasoline-powered electrical generator that radiated wires to the trailer, hogan, and main sheep shed. Other pole sheds served as summer kitchen, work spaces, barns. A four-wheeled ATV and a battered white Ford pickup were parked next to a pair of rust-stained 250-gallon fuel tanks. The extensive board- and wire-fenced sheep pens were empty now but for two gaunt horses and maybe a dozen sheep. With the grandparents getting too old to manage a lot of animals, the family would have moved the main flock to some other relative's place.

They arrived and sat in the truck with the windows rolled down, listening to the silence that lay on the land like a heavy physical thing, wrapping and muffling the whole uneven circle of the horizon. At last the trailer door opened to reveal Tommy's grandmother, a tiny, wizened woman wearing a wide dark-brown dress and red wool sweater. They got out of the truck and made greetings, and after another couple of minutes the old man came out. From what Joseph could see of his face beneath his cowboy hat and black horn-rims, his deeply seamed features seemed carved of aged, smoke-darkened wood. His new-looking blue jeans and crisp checked shirt cinched with a bolo tie suggested he'd dressed up when he'd heard visitors arrive.

When Joseph had first met them at the hospital, their stiff walks, weathered faces, cautious eyes, knobbed hard-worked hands, and the faint sweet stink of lanolin and sheep manure had made them seem rustic and anachronistic, especially set against the sterile tiles of the hospital corridors. In this landscape, though, they seemed stronger, aged but hardy, at home among the brown rocks and dry earth.

But they were also very frightened. However Tommy's condition had developed in the last two days, Joseph knew, what they had seen had been harrowing.

The grandfather was older than Uncle Joe, and Uncle Joe treated him with deference as they made courtesies, mentioned family members who knew family members, remembered veterinary visits from years past, talked about the health of the flock and the price of wool. Watching them, Joseph wondered if even they knew their grandson was adopted. He tried to picture Hastiin Keeday as a member of a lynch mob that had murdered an old recluse forty years ago. To his surprise, he found he couldn't muster any judgment against him. Whatever this grave, frail man had done, he'd acted with conscience.

Another sign of eroding certainties, Joseph thought with alarm. Values, beliefs, all up for grabs.

The grandparents explained that they'd been wary when they'd heard the truck coming because a Child Protective Services agent had already been there looking for Tommy. When they'd told him that the boy wasn't there, the agent had waved legal papers and warned them that he planned to stop by the houses of Tommy's various aunts and uncles, too.

They were scared of trouble with the authorities, they said, but after what they had seen last night, they were vastly more afraid of the ghost that moved in Tommy and what it meant for their family. Even their hardbitten dignity couldn't hide that hunted, fearful look.

"What happened?" Joseph asked.

They darted glances at each other, reluctant to speak of it. But Hastiin Keeday made a grim face and ground it out: "Our son and our daughter went to the hospital and brought him back here. The Hand-Trembler, Edison Begaye, we had already asked him to be here. We held the divination last night. Tommy seemed better on the way home, and we hoped maybe he was going to be all right. But later, we saw the ghost awaken in him." The old man shut his eyes momentarily as if trying to banish the image. He gestured at a deeply bowed pinon branch among a bundle of kindling: "He bent his back like that, and he spoke in a stranger's voice. For a long time he bent back and forth on the ground, like a grub from the soil. He tore his shirt off and we could see the chindi moving in the muscles in his back. He bit himself. We couldn't stop him. Not even Hastiin Begaye, not our son Raymond. We couldn't move our legs or arms to help him."

"What did Hastiin Begaye say?" Uncle Joe asked.

The old woman answered: "The chindi of an ancestor has come into him. It's very angry because it was wronged when it was alive." The grandmother bit off the words and then sealed her mouth tight in its radiating wrinkles, growing stern, cutting off any further discussion of the details because the chindi might hear and figure out ways to sabotage the healing rituals. Joseph knew that the old people would need Ways sung, too, having been contaminated by their proximity to Tommy.

With Uncle Joe's tactful probing, they told him that the younger family members had brought the boy up to the summer sheep camp, where they were caring for him in shifts. A young grandson named Eric served as runner between sites, taking up supplies on his ATV. They had already arranged the curing Way with a renowned Singer from Red Rock, and preparations were under way for the ceremony early next week.

Joseph said almost nothing until it was time to bring up his errand. He began his request with a preamble, which the old people waited out, nodding respectfully. But in fact, they needed no persuasion. They answered by praising Uncle Joe's judgment, saying they trusted Joseph and appreciated Julieta. As for the bilagaana psychologist, to Joseph's astonishment, they said Tommy had asked them to bring her to him. In one of the few moments when he could speak clearly.

Uncle Joe asked them to remind him how to get to the summer camp, which entailed a lot of gesturing and drawing maps in the sand. It was almost six miles north. The grandfather promised he would tell his daughter and son to expect visitors from Tommy's school tomorrow.

It was almost five o'clock by the time they left. Saying good-bye to the two old people moved Joseph deeply: seeing them standing there, in the last inhabited part of a once-thriving family compound, surrounded by the ruins of hogans whose occupants had died or moved and the remains of defunct sheep operations. A snapshot of two lives approaching their end. Of a bygone era. The old man took his wife's hand and held it against his chest, and they stood motionless, watching the truck pull out as if reluctant to see their visitors go.

The truck bumped and tilted slowly back down the driveway.

Though what the Keedays said about Tommy was deeply troubling, Joseph concluded that the meeting had been very successful. Despite their fear, the old people were facing this family problem with courage. They'd insisted on the old healing ways yet were open-minded about Cree Black. Clearly, Uncle Joe was held in great respect by these people, and he'd done a terrific job, handling everything with perfect tact.

And yet from the pressure he felt in his chest, Joseph knew there was still a lot of unfinished business. The tightening knot in his throat was like a lock, holding back the secrets.

Uncle Joe gripped the wheel hard and said nothing. He seemed burdened, too-sad, preoccupied. Again he had refused Joseph's offer to drive, yet now he seemed shaky. The sweat on his temples gave it away: Whatever else he might be worried about, he was entering alcohol withdrawal.

"You know Margaret's Catholic," Uncle Joe said, out of the blue. "I don't take much stock in it myself, but, boy, does that woman feel better after she goes to confession."

The invitation touched Joseph, but though he ached to tell, he stalled with an uneasy joke: "Why is it I have such a hard time picturing you as a priest, Uncle?"

"Maybe the same reason I have a hard time seeing you as any kind of sinner. Any more than my wife."

"I still haven't told Julieta that I didn't place her baby. That I didn't know where he was or who he was."

Uncle Joe winced with discomfort as his body shook slightly. "So after today, you'll tell her. Blame me if you want, tell her I always refused to tell you. I don't care, got nothing to lose."

"There's something else I never told her. Never told anybody."

Uncle Joe put the truck into low gear to bring it over a particularly uneven shelf of rock.

"I need to tell her. But I'm afraid to for a lot of reasons. One of them is that she's fragile, she has a very strong front, but when she breaks, it's… painful."

"She's in for a rough ride, Julieta. Whatever you tell her or don't. Just stand by her, you'll probably fix it up."

"If she lets me. If she'll forgive me. She can get very angry, Uncle. She… hurts herself with her own anger. She might not forgive me."

Uncle Joe concentrated on his driving, the sweat beading on his grizzled temples. Joseph wished he'd get stern, get clever, anything that would force it out of him in some way. But of course Uncle Joe wouldn't. It was up to Joseph to tell it, to face it. To let out the pressure that was choking him.

"This was back before the baby was born," he began. "She was six, seven months pregnant, she was living in that apartment in Gallup, she was hiding from Garrett McCarty. I was her only contact with the world. I was the only one who knew what she was going through. She'd been hurt by her husband and then Peter Yellowhorse had left her and gone to California. One time she showed me this letter he'd written, how he'd gotten a job out there, he had another girlfriend, he was going to try out for the movies. That was the only time she'd heard from him. When she wasn't sad, she was furious. She'd risked everything for him, and he'd tossed her aside."

Uncle Joe just drove. Up and down and over the rough track, the endless fields of stone and sand jolting past. The constant roiling and pitching. Joseph gripped the door handle, feeling seasick.

"I knew Peter a little. The three of us got together a few times, clandestine meetings for lunch or at my place, before she got pregnant. I thought he was kind of… footloose, but I could see how they felt about each other. They were, what would you call it… kindred spirits. They had chemistry-sparks flew. And something more, deeper, at least for Julieta. Maybe for him, too, but it was hard to tell, a guy like that. He was very smart, he could talk like a poet and make jokes and he knew he was good-looking. I heard from people that he had something of a reputation, that women liked him. And he could get away with things without consequences."

"Sounds like me," Uncle Joe put in sadly. "Back whenever."

"But I never told Julieta about that. I thought they should have a chance. I thought maybe he'd change, even he would know he'd never get that lucky again. Not in this life."

"You wanted her."

Early on, Joseph thought, no-not exactly, not yet. At first, it wasn't something he'd let himself think or admit. "They were in love," he said simply. "I liked them both. I wasn't ready, either."

There was a period of silence during which Uncle Joe shifted and accelerated into a smoother stretch. He used the respite from two-handed driving to light a cigarette, the shaking of his hands more pronounced. "Jesus, we've only gone about two miles. I don't know how those old people do it-driveway that takes fifteen minutes, forty minutes to the county road every time."

"So it's winter and she's around seven months pregnant, Peter's been gone six months, she's barely hanging on. Afraid of Garrett, mad as hell at him. Still in love with Peter and so mad she'd throw things when she talked about him. And I'm thinking, How could he do this, how could he leave her? She was so beautiful, Uncle! And by then I wanted her, I wanted her to love me like that. But the last thing I could do was… put that in her way. She had enough to deal with as it was." A gout of Uncle Joe's smoke swirled in the cab and Joseph's breath caught on it. He had to cough and clear his throat before going on: "So one night I was at home, I was tired, I'd just come off rotation at the hospital, my first break in a while. This was just before Julieta decided to give up the baby. And I got a phone call."

"Uh-oh."

"Yeah, it was Peter Yellowhorse. He was still in California, he said he'd been trying to reach Julieta for days, but she never answered the phone. He wanted to know if she was all right. He said he was coming back, he was going to catch a bus. Wanted to know if she was still at the old house, or if she wasn't, could I give him her new phone number? This was when she had an unlisted number at her apartment, trying to keep Garrett from finding her. And I'm angry at him, too. I tell him, What the hell do you care? You got her pregnant, left her, broke her heart, you shacked up with some Apache girl! And he tells me he's left that girl because he realizes he can't live without Julieta, he'll do anything for her. Everything he should have known six or seven months earlier."

"So what did you do?" Uncle Joe croaked. His voice was so gravelly and sick that Joseph pulled back from the memory to appraise him with a doctor's eye. He looked alarmingly bad-greenish, clammy, full of tremors.

"When was the last time you had a drink?" Joseph demanded.

"This morning. Just before I got your message on the machine."

Joseph calculated the time and was appalled: almost eight hours. " Why-"

"Because we needed old Keeday's respect. He probably knows I'm a drunk from way back, but he's been a puritan teetotaler since his son got killed drunk driving."

"You can't just quit, Uncle Joe! Going cold turkey, you could have seizures! At your age, you'll have a heart attack!" Joseph yanked open the glove compartment, rummaged through it, found nothing. He checked the door pocket, bent to feel under the seat, twisted to scan the backseat and floor, but there was no bottle anywhere. "Don't you keep something in the truck? You must keep a-"

"No! Today is a day of important duties that I want to respect, I don't want to be drunk for!" He gave a terrible glance as Joseph started to argue, and he brought his fist down on the dashboard so hard the sunglasses and cigarette pack there jumped. "Don't fight with me! Just finish this business! Today we finish all this business! Tell me what you did. When he asked you where she was."

"I told him he should stay away from her! That he was bad for her. That she was finally starting to get over him, she didn't need him coming back to wreck her life again. That I wouldn't tell him a damned thing and he should stay away!"

"So then what?"

"He hung up on me! And I never told Julieta he'd called. And that was the last time either of us ever heard from him." Joseph continued quickly before he became afraid to go on: "I know what I did, but I don't know why I did it. Did I really do it because I wanted to protect her, because Julieta really would be better off without him? Or did I do it because I wanted to keep him away, so maybe I could be with her myself?"

The truck rode up a sudden incline and at last they could see the slightly smoother track of the dirt road, a quarter mile ahead. Uncle Joe shifted down for the slope and said despondently, "Everybody did something sometime, Joseph."

Joseph knew he meant, Something they can't forgive themselves for.

"You were probably right, the kid was no good, he'd've been gone again as soon as the baby was born. You know how a guy like that operates."

"I'm not so sure."

They had come to the end of the Keedays' driveway. Uncle Joe pulled the truck up to the junction, stopped it, and bent to rest his forehead against the steering wheel as if trying to muster enough energy for the rest of the drive. The sun was dipping into a band of haze over the western horizon, turning the desert shadow-black and orange and making the gnarled buttes and rocks point lengthening shadows at them.

"Uncle. Let me drive now."

"No."

"Uncle, you shouldn't be-"

"If your little lecture was enough to discourage him, his heart wasn't in it anyway." Uncle Joe winced with discomfort as he straightened again. "Didn't have the guts."

Joseph felt a wave of nausea come over him, and when he spoke again it was if he were vomiting it out, an expulsive contraction that couldn't be resisted: "You're not seeing what it means! It would have all been different! If I'd given him her number, told him the truth, 'Yeah, she still loves you,' he'd have come back. Even if he'd left her again a couple months later, she'd have kept the baby! You see why I haven't told her?" You see why I can't be with her?

Uncle Joe took it like a slap, but then turned to Joseph with eyes that were incredibly sad and old, the lids twitching as alcohol withdrawal wrought havoc inside him. He'd neglected his cigarette and ash had scattered all over his clothes and the seat. Joseph felt fear strike him, that Uncle Joe was going to collapse or crash the truck. He'd seen withdrawal seizures before, and his uncle was not a good candidate for surviving one.

"Yeah," Uncle Joe wheezed at last. "Well, there's something I haven't told you, too. Another stop we have to make today."

And to Joseph's surprise, the old man turned the truck to the west-not back toward Uncle Joe's home and bottle but toward Highway 666 and Naschitti, into the dull red eye of the sun.