Daniel Hecht_Cree Black 02 (13 page)

Just like his father.

"One mistake," she told Spence. "That's all it takes. One. Then your whole life is spent living it down or trying to compensate."

Spence swiveled one ear as if to hear her better but didn't answer. And of course it wasn't that simple. Which was the one
mistake? Being suckered into that first teen modeling job? Sticking to the competitions despite growing misgivings? Going
out for lunch that first time with a man old enough to be her father?

Or maybe the mistake was one of the avalanche of decisions that had come later and that had haunted her, every day, ever since.

It was hard to think of the creature inside Tommy as anything but a demon, a supernatural monster existing only to cause anguish—
some horrible being from Navajo mythology, or a violent spirit of the ancient rocks, a distillation of sheer malevolence from
old, angry gods. But maybe Cree Black was right about everything. Maybe she was right to look at Julieta, to put her on the
couch along with Tommy. Maybe she was right in her theory that the psychological situations of people in proximity to the
haunting created the conditions needed to support a ghost's manifestation. That what had invaded Tommy was a part of a once-human
consciousness, taking someone else's flesh in an attempt to fulfill its deepest compulsions.

If that was true, there was only one person Julieta could imagine having the malice to do what it was doing. One person who'd
have the fiendish insight and the motivation to destroy a child,
this
child, in an effort to strike at Julieta herself.

That's why she'd come here today, she realized. To remind herself.

She stood up on the stirrups and beamed hatred at the rearing boom where Garrett McCarty had gotten himself killed, as if
she might see his vicious ghost and by sheer force of will send it screaming back to hell.

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 Dinê."

"So . . . what
does
it mean to be Dinê?"

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.