Land of Echoes

40

Wednesday morning, bright and clear, not yet nine o'clock. Cree had showered, but she hadn't slept and was tired and wired beyond anything she could remember. Earlier, she had called Paul in New Orleans, deliberately dialing his office number so she'd get his answering machine, and left a message saying she'd be out of touch for a few days, don't worry if she didn't call. Then she had called ahead to the Navajo Nation Inn to let Joyce and Edgar know she was coming. It would be a short conference, and they wouldn't like what she had to tell them.

The two of them were already waiting in Edgar's room, where the curtains were pulled wide, filling the room with sunlight. The TV was on with the sound off: some morning news show featuring clips of missiles taking off, then somber talking heads, then some more armaments doing their thing.

"You got a coffeemaker in here?" Cree asked.

"It's already made." Edgar poured her a cup from the little carafe and Cree took it greedily, swigged it, scalded her tongue and was glad for the pain.

"Long night?" Joyce inquired. Deadpan understatement serving as accusation.

"And getting longer by the minute."

"So you haven't slept at all?"

"Let's sit, we've got a lot of ground to cover and then I've got to get going."

They sat reluctantly, giving each other dubious glances.

"Here's the deal. I know where Tommy is, and I have the family's permission to see him. I've got to go, this morning. From what Joseph Tsosie says, he's losing ground fast. The state Child Protective Services people are looking for him, the doctors want to try potentially damaging drug therapies on him, Julieta's going to pieces, and Donny McCarty is eager to make some shit for Julieta and the school for reasons I don't-"

"Cree," Edgar broke in. "Slow down. You're really wound up."

Cree inhaled, counted to three, and went on: "Tommy's aunts and uncles and cousins are on shifts taking care of him, but they may not be able to do much. That… paralysis, or whatever the hell it is, is getting stronger-"

"And into the breach steps Cree Black to single-handedly save the day," Joyce said witheringly.

"Don't, Joyce. Don't even bother. I've got to get to him and try to make contact with whatever's in him, and I've got to do it immediately. I'll be leaving here and going to the sheep camp where they've taken him. The grandparents' place is two hours' drive from here, the roads are supposed to be a bitch, and the camp is some miles beyond that. So I can't go back and forth."

"Meaning we're not coming with you," Edgar clarified.

"I can't explain the dynamics right now, Ed! There's cultural stuff, there's racial stuff, there are family issues, it's all very complex territory and we're lucky they're letting even me see him. I will certainly ask if you can come, but I doubt they'll go for it. I'd like to put the FMEEG on him as much as you would, but there's no power source for it up there anyway."

She took another breath as they stared at her. She inhaled again and tried to find the brake pedal and put her thoughts in order. Looking down at the half-drunk cup in her hand, she saw the ebony surface shivering with concentric rings as her jangly energy conveyed itself to the liquid. The image teased her memory, and after a second then she placed it: Jurassic Park-that glass of water, trembling with the approaching footsteps of T. Rex.

"You want to tell us what happened last night?" Ed asked gently. He glanced at her scraped hands and broken nails.

"I went to the mesa, and don't bother bitching at me about it! There was an event out there, at least two people died, probably more. Two teenagers, a girl and a boy, trying to retrieve their family's goats. I assume they were Navajos. They were shot by horsemen. I saw it through the girl's eyes. I didn't pick up the brother at all. But the girl called him Shinaai."

" Shot-guns or arrows?" Joyce's legal pad had materialized in her hands.

Seeing that, Cree's momentum stumbled. She looked from Joyce to Ed, saw the concern in their faces and their resigned readiness to support her, and abruptly she loved them so much it hurt. It took her a moment to get her breath.

"Guns," she said.

"Any chance either the boy or the girl is our entity?"

"Not the girl. But the boy or another family member, I'd say a very good chance."

"But… what's the link to Tommy?" Ed asked. "What's he got in common with those ghosts?"

"I don't know yet. I need to get something more from Tommy, or I need some historical background that'll steer me. Have you made any headway on the mesa, Joyce?"

Joyce shook her head. "Sorry, Cree. I kept at it after we went to the mine yesterday, but nothing. History teachers up at Dine College and UNM, the people at Gallup Historical Society-nobody knew bupkes about that mesa. I looked at a couple of old maps from the 1800s, but it isn't marked on them. I still have a few leads left to follow up, but I'm not holding my breath."

"Okay. Well, make it top priority today. From what you've learned about the history of the area, do you have any general ideas about what could have happened, or when?"

"Hmm. Horses would mean post-1540 at the least, and probably later. The combination of guns and horses would suggest it's something more recent, closer to the American era, like mid-1800s. Could be an event from intertribal raiding, maybe Utes or Apaches. Or a slave raid by Mexicans, or some U.S. Army action. I don't know."

" 'The New People,'" Cree muttered. " 'The Enemy People.' That's how she thought of them."

Joyce puzzled, made a note.

"What can I do?" Edgar put in. "The electrical system checks out as sound, there's nothing for us to learn there. Nothing that would help you now, in any case. I'd go to the ravine and do some technical work, but we're obviously past that point."

"Help Joyce with the mesa. Somewhere there's got to be a record of what happened there."

Ed nodded. Cree drained her cup, then stood and went to the coffeemaker. She poured the last splash and gulped it, trying to remember what else she needed to tell them.

Joyce looked up from her notes, frowning. "What about the idea of the entity being Garrett McCarty? Is there anything Ed and I can do to verify or exclude that possibility?"

"I don't know how, just now. But I had a disturbing moment yesterday afternoon. Julieta told me she's thought other kids at the school might be hers. That doesn't mean Tommy isn't her kid, but from where I sit it shoots a lot of holes in her… reliability as a witness. If it turns out he isn't her child, I don't see how the Garrett McCarty idea would hold much water."

"Can we do something to determine, definitively, who Tommy is?" Edgar asked.

"His birth records won't help. I'm hoping I can ask the relatives whether he was adopted. If they'll tell me anything. But we really need to look hard at the Keedays-Tommy's parents, adoptive or otherwise. Have you got any more on that, Joyce?"

Joyce bobbed her head. "A little. Found the medical examiner's report. Thomas and Bernice Keeday, killed in a car crash up near Tuba City. Both had been drinking, but the father's blood alcohol was through the roof, like one point eight, so his last hours and moments would have been pretty cloudy. He was speeding, tried to avoid some cows on the road, drove into a boulder. Death was instantaneous for both of them-severe head injuries."

"Night? Day?"

"Night. Time of death ten fifty-eight p.m."

Cree filed the information away. "Any theories about why one of them would come into Tommy at this point, at this place?"

They both shook their heads.

Cree was pacing aimlessly, frazzled and jittery, but stopped as Edgar stood and took her arm.

"Cree. Before you go blasting out of here. Stop for one second. Stop and tell us, tell yourself, what you've got going for you out there. What you're bringing to the situation in the way of a plan or information. You don't know who the ghost is or what it wants, you don't even know who Tommy Keeday is."

Of course he was right, she wasn't thinking clearly. All she had were a few vague ideas batting around in her head, moths swarming a porch light. But you had to have a battle plan. Ordinarily, an investigation would entail a lot of brainstorming with Ed and Joyce, going over the details, conducting a microanalysis, sifting what they'd learned for clues about the ghost's actions, motivations, historical period, anything. This whole situation had been so headlong from the first moment. They hadn't taken the time.

She dropped onto the bed, bounced, sat, chewed her lips. They watched her.

"If we're thinking the ghost is stuck reliving its last moments, we've got to look at its narrative. That's all I'll have if you guys can't come up with any historical data. What is it trying to do? What is it reliving?"

The entity in Tommy was probably reliving a memory or a fantasy of some action. If a memory, it was most likely one from the period just before and during its death, or a crucial event in its earlier life. Memory or fantasy, knowing it would help Cree discern the ghost's core motivation, its unfulfilled urge.

"What does it do that supports the perseverating narrative idea?" Ed prompted.

Cree tried to recall every moment. "Well, the first night I was there, it went walking. And it seems to attack or… fight. There's a period of convulsions every time, too. Some stereotypical movements, too, the arm pushing out and snapping back."

"Is there a predictable sequence to its actions?" Joyce asked.

Cree thought about it, trying to picture it. "Maybe. I don't know. The problem is, you can't tell whether it's the entity or Tommy who's at the wheel at any given moment. You see what I mean? And we don't know how much of what we're seeing is just a… a bad fit, a neurological short-circuiting caused by two beings trying to occupy one body. And whatever the ghost is trying to do, it can't very well because Tommy fights it. We fight it. We sit on Tommy so he doesn't hurt himself."

"Hmm." Ed turned away, folded his arms across his chest, dropped his head. Turned back. "What would happen if nobody fought it? If you just let it go so you could observe the whole cycle of its actions?"

"I've considered that. So far, I've been too afraid Tommy could hurt himself-walk off a cliff or something. Afraid if we don't interrupt it, it'll take him over completely. But you're right, I'd get a better idea of what's going on if I let it play out. It'd have to be a last resort, though."

Ed nodded. "Okay. So what have we seen that suggests intentional elements?"

"The arm's independent movements. You can't escape the sense that it's acting with self-awareness. Like the entity knows it's 'alive,' it's trying to figure out what's going on. The hand explores, makes gestures, and reacts-when it touched Tommy's hair, it pulled away quickly, as if surprised."

"As if it had expected to feel a different type of hair?" Joyce asked. Cree shrugged, maybe.

"Two ghosts?" Ed hazarded. "Both parents? One somehow limited to control of the arm?"

"Seems unlikely. But who knows? It's just so hard to say." Cree's frustration and urgency came back, intolerable. "Again, I don't know who's Tommy and who's his visitor, or when the arm is part of the perseveration and when it's self-aware. I don't know how to figure it out."

Neither of them had any advice to offer.

Cree double-knotted her boots and stood up. "But I'll do my best. Narrative. I'll look for the ghost's narrative. I'll look for cycles and sequence. Thanks for keeping me rational. I don't know why this is so emotional for me."

They both looked as if they wanted to say something, but neither did. They just held her eyes gravely.

"Listen, you guys. If I don't… if anything happens so that I'm

… you know, if it gets into me and I can't get it out. You guys find me. You'll bring me back, I know you will. But if you can't, call Dee. If she can't, call Mason Ambrose in Geneva. He's the world's worst shit, but he knows a lot about this stuff."

Ed nodded. "One more thing. Take my cell phone. I know you hate to use them, but for this once, I think it's a good idea. Short messages won't screw up your brain irretrievably." He held out the little rectangle.

"Please."

Cree took it and put it in her pocket. She stepped toward the door, but paused. Suddenly she felt as if she were about to cry. "Hugs," she mumbled. "Gotta have some hugs here."

They surrounded her, and she drew strength from the nearness of them, their familiar smells and the warmth of their bodies and the glowing, golden aura of their friendship. And then she broke free and left the hotel to begin the drive to the Keedays'.

It wasn't until twenty minutes later, as she turned north onto 666, that she realized she'd forgotten to tell Ed and Joyce about Nick Stephanovic's nighttime visit to the ravine. She turned it over and over in her thoughts. Another convergence on that place, another piece that she couldn't get to fit the puzzle. Finally, aware her circling thoughts were wearing grooves in her brain, she gave up on it. Now it was just time to keep her appointment with the inevitable.