Daniel Hecht_Cree Black 02 (44 page)

Peter willed his body to move. But he couldn't lash out and he couldn't stand up. All the effort did was bend and straighten
him. He was aware that he was writhing on the ground as the big man stood over him. Back and forth, trying to straighten his
body, then feeling the unbearable pain and curling back around it.

Stephanovic was grunting and swearing. He didn't want to do this, Peter could tell. Which meant he could be persuaded. Peter
tried to find the thing that would convince him to disobey and to help him. He had to find the thing that mattered most in
the world. That was Julieta. But he didn't want to say her name. Didn't want to use her to save himself. But she was pregnant,
she needed Peter to be father to the baby. He had to be father to the baby. Any man would understand that.

Peter tried to tell him. "Baby," he said. "Baby." Regret tainted the pure clarity of his determination. He hadn't just been
stupid, he had been cruel.

He heard Stephanovic's breathless swearing coming closer and thought he'd reached the man, but then a big rock landed next
to him, bruising his shoulder.

No,
Peter screamed inside. "Baby!" he said out loud. Stephanovic's face was just a white blob in the darkness above him, but he
tried to catch his eye, convey his passion. Still the big man didn't understand, so Peter made a gigantic effort: "Don't kill
me! I have to take care of her! I have to be with my kid." But his meaning was changing, what mattered most was still deeper.
What he really meant was,
Let me live so I can do it right, fix the mistakes. Don't kill me with that undone. Don't kill a man who hasn't undone his cruelties.

Another rock fell, this one landing directly on his legs. "I don't understand Navajo," Stephanovic said. Then he was gone
again. His swearing got distant and then came back.

The effort to shout had tired Peter. He needed to rest, gather his energy. He found the secret place of strength again and
held himself curled there. He'd outwait Stephanovic. If he had to, he could wait forever. He'd curl up and hold himself still
and come exploding back. He'd be with Julieta and the kid and set all the mistakes right.

An empty time later, he opened his eyes to find he was covered with rocks. But not entirely. He could see up into the sky
in the gaps between them. The rocks were all over him, but they mostly supported each other's weight and weren't that heavy.
There was no sound. Stephanovic had gone, left him for dead.

But he wasn't! He was alive, and he could move. One arm was pinned beneath him, but he was able to fight the other arm free.
The rocks shifted slightly, allowing him to bring his hand up. He pushed at the big rock that lay just above his chest. It
lifted, pivoted, dropped back down. He did it again. He could lift it, but then it just pivoted back and his arm gave way.
Again. Again. The rock made a gritting noise as it lifted and a hard, final noise when it fell back. So now he'd rest again.
Stephanovic hadn't killed him and hadn't even buried him deeply. He'd get out. He'd find his cousins over near Hunters Point
and they'd take him to a doctor and then he'd go to Julieta.

Garrett McCarty would never stop him. Nothing could stop him.

Something was happening up in the sky. No,
near
the sky. Bright light washed over the lip of the ravine sixty feet directly above him. Red boulders and slabs, the crumbling
undercut edge, sharply lit against the black sky. The shadows shifted. He heard motor noise. A Jeep up there. Stephanovic
had driven around to the south end of the mesa, where the slope was not so steep. The lights eclipsed and shafted bright and
the motor labored. Grinding, grating noises. Then all the rocks were moving, the whole section of cliff was falling, gathering
other rocks and hurtling down.

49

JULIETA RODE the Keedays' horse as hard as the animal could stand. It was a tall, bony paint gelding, already getting shaggy
for winter, out of shape from too much time in the grandparents' corral. She pushed him until he wheezed. The air was a harsh,
crisp cold. A hundred feet ahead in the predawn light, Joseph sat behind Tommy's cousin on the ATV. The taillights, so bright
when they'd started out, were already dimming as the landscape drew light from the sky.

She hadn't heard from Cree again, but as she'd lain there in Joseph's bed the worry had intruded on the oasis of serenity
they'd made together and increasingly she'd sensed it was urgent to get to Tommy. They had left Window Rock at two in the
morning and driven the empty roads and wandering wheel tracks for over two hours. They'd awakened Tommy's grandparents and
cousin, saddled this horse, and set out.

Once they'd climbed out of the strange canyonlike maze and reached the higher plateau, the going was easier. The horse could
sustain a lope for a couple of minutes on end. The ATV bobbed and swerved as the eastern sky turned a bland gray-blue above
the dark land.

At last Eric stopped the ATV and let Joseph off, pointing ahead toward a low, dark hogan. Julieta cantered past them, pulled
up at the open door, leapt off. The gelding huffed as she dropped the reins and looked through the doorway. A single dull
rectangle of window light. Nobody inside.

"Mrs. McCarty?"

She whirled at the voice. A middle-aged Navajo woman stood thirty feet away, looking haggard, blowing puffs of steam into
the freezing air. Tommy's aunt, Ellen.

"They're over here. He only got a little way last time. It's good you came. He's starting again. Cree says if he does it again,
he'll die."

Julieta's heart clenched at the words. She followed Ellen into an area of rocks and sagebrush, and then spotted the other
people: two men, standing some distance apart from two blanket-wrapped forms on the ground. Cree and Tommy.

She hurried to them. Tommy lay twisted among blankets and sheepskins on the bare ground, motionless but not quite asleep.
His eyes were open to staring slits in a face that was almost skeletal and greenish in the predawn light. Julieta was seized
with worry for him, and with it came that sense of knowing, of resonance, of recognition that she swore she'd forbid herself
but that came anyway. She
knew
him. It had to be her child's ghost in Tommy.

"Hey," Cree said amiably. "Good timing."

Julieta was horrified by Cree's appearance. Sitting at Tommy's side, she looked battered and drained. Even with the heavy
blanket around her, Julieta could see the hard cant of her head, the tilt of her shoulders. Some of the grotesque half twist
of the ghost had come into her.

"Are you all right?" she stammered.

"Fine," Cree panted. "Listen. Not much time. This is going to be hard, Julieta. Hardest thing you ever did. I can't tell you
how. Tommy's just about gone. I've only lived through the dying twice. And it's just about done me in. But Tommy's done it
dozens of times. And there's the breathing thing. He can't survive another time. You have to let the ghost go. One shot at
it. Has to be just right."

Joseph finally joined them. He came to Julieta's side and put his arm around her waist and she put both her hands over his, pressing him against her.

"Hey, Dr. Tsosie," Cree rasped.

"Dr. Black." Joseph bobbed his head. He kept himself outwardly calm, but Julieta knew that his physician's eyes saw the crisis
here for what it was.

"Is . . . is it—?" Julieta began.

Tommy moaned and stirred. Behind his slitted eyelids, his eyes were moving wildly. Julieta felt a reprise of that numbing
indecision that meant the ghost was awakening.

"You have to go with it," Cree croaked faintly. "With the ghost. It's reliving a memory. Like a recurring dream? There's a
place where you can intercept. When he knocks at the door. Don't do it sooner, worlds won't mesh. Don't do it later or it'll
be too late."

Julieta wasn't sure whether Cree was speaking allegorically.
Knocks at the door
—
to the real world? To consciousness? To your heart?
Cree's vocabulary mixed poetry and psychology and philosophy, you couldn't always tell.

"What would you like me to do?" Joseph asked.

Cree looked up at him. She started to speak, then seemed to catch something in his face that needed further inspection. After
a few more seconds, she almost seemed to smile. "Just keep back a little. With the others."

Joseph nodded, stepped back to join Tommy's family. Tommy's legs began moving in weak, rhythmic thrusts. He was walking while
lying down.

Cree had closed her eyes. "Listen, Julieta. At first you won't know what's going on. It'll seem like random thoughts. Like
you're making it up. Like a daydream. Just let it happen."

Julieta felt the ghost burgeoning. With its hypnotic aura came that irrational sense of
knowing
again. Panicking, she asked Cree, "What are you going to do?"

"I'll just go with him. Help you find the . . . story. But I'm totally screwed up, Julieta. I'm Tommy, I'm you, I'm me, I'm Peter. I can't—"

"Peter?"

"Tommy's his son." Cree's neck twisted and it seemed to hurt her. "Your best," she choked out. "The person you'd rather be.
Got to stack it up right. Like you said."

Julieta wanted to grab her shoulders and shake answers out of her. But Cree's eyes were rolling behind her closed lids. Tommy
was moving in his awful parody of walking. Not knowing what else to do, Julieta knelt next to him. She put her hand on his
side, felt the trembling effort of his muscles. She shut her eyes.

At first she thought there was nothing she could find. Images popped into her head, but she didn't trust them: fantasy, memory,
random subconscious collage, wishful thinking? The effort made her almost sleepy. But some things persisted. She still felt
the sense of familiarity, and she let that guide her.

The side of a hill and a horizon. She recognized the land with a shock. Over near Peter's place, the hills along Black Creek.
He was walking toward her house. It was chilly out, and the dry hills told her it was autumn. It would have been that fall,
when everything fell apart. Yes, it was. He had just come from San Diego. His thoughts embarrassed her. Joseph would hear
them. Peter was tired and sore and yet he sparkled and spangled with bright feelings. That
energy:
She knew that energy, the presence that was Peter. Oh, God, it was gorgeous, it was a magnet. Everything was right there,
the memory of his hair on the wind as they rode, the corded lean muscle in his thighs against hers. His bronze smooth skin
and the brash confidence and innocence in his eyes. Peter was a spark, a wild joyous song. He carried desire like a tightly
wound spring in his belly and loins and it commanded her and she commanded it and it gave her great pleasure to know it belonged
to her.

Except that it didn't. There was a girl in San Diego. He was coming back but he'd left her and then he must have left the
other woman, too, and all he was really doing was following the path of least resistance. He felt and did everything with
such certainty, but it was so shallow. So transient.

Julieta wanted to lash out at him. Scream at him. Blithely striding across the rolling swells toward the mesa, so certain
he'd be forgiven! But Cree had said wait. Said do your best. No,
be
your best. But what was best?

There was her house, windows glowing in the twilight. Peter was hurrying. He was racing across the ground like a wind-lashed
wildfire, heat and light and hunger. Irresistible. The land, the house just the way it was back then, it was all real again.

Peter knocked at the door.

Julieta was dimly aware that Cree had moaned and that Tommy was standing in front of her.

She answered the door with no idea how to respond. She was so hurt inside. She was so angry at him. Yet she felt him so strongly.
He was there, he was alive, he had come back, he was afire with longing and contrition. He was a force that bent her.

A ghost's dream,
she tried to remind herself.
A woman's memories.

It didn't help. She was only partly aware that Tommy's body stood before her in the growing light. All she really saw was
Peter. The sight of him struck her breathless.

"Birdman," she said softly.

"
Julieta!
"

He was glorious in his relief and passion. His eyes pleaded with her but he didn't speak again, just stood there, letting
his body say everything. His jeans were ripped, his shirt dirty. He was breathing hard. Confused images roiled in his mind:
fighting, pain, turmoil. They rumbled and faded away like thunder.

She stepped out to him, cupped his face in her hands. He touched her hands as if to verify they were real, then slid his own
hands to her face.

"I came back," he said.

"So I see."

"I was thinking about you the whole time."

"Yes. Me, too," she said. Sadness filled her at the thought.

He hesitated. "I was afraid you'd be too mad at me. But I love you. You have to know that. I always loved you. The whole time."

"I'm not mad anymore. I know you loved me."

"The baby—?"

Another pang of sadness, almost enough to bring her out of the ghost's fragile dream. "The baby is fine. You have a beautiful
son."

That confused him even as it eased him. "I was worried. I was afraid—"

"Shhh," she soothed him. "Don't be afraid."

"And I was worried about you."

You hurt me so bad, Birdman,
she thought.
So damn bad.
But that was long past, and what she said was, "I'm fine. Everything is okay now. It's all worked out as it should have."

That made him feel much better. He was enormously relieved. A knot released inside him as if the very stuff he was made of
unkinked, calmed and smoothed. He was suffused with love for her. His hands moved down her cheeks to her shoulders and down
her sides to her waist. They stood together on the edge of the porch that way for a long moment, and then he grinned tentatively.

"I had an unfortunate encounter on the interstate. Now I know what it means to be
rolled.
I didn't want to look like this when you saw me again."

"You're even more handsome than I remembered. Much, much more."

His grin gained confidence. "So . . . you going to invite me in, or what? Freezing out here. Prodigal Indian comes back, yeah?
We should cele­brate."

Julieta had dimly wondered what would happen at the moment, but when it came there was no hesitation at all. "No, Peter. Things
changed while you were . . . gone."

"Uh-oh. Like what?"

"I'm in love with someone else. I've been in love with him for a long time. You can't come back to me."

Peter stiffened in hurt and disappointment, and an image of struggle, fighting, rocks falling flashed through his thoughts.
Julieta was vaguely aware that Cree had stirred in her blanket. The dawn light was much stronger now. Tommy held her waist
in his thin hands and looked into her face with Peter's eyes, now very confused. He was so weak his legs were trembling with
the effort of standing. Peter needed consoling.

"Everything is okay now, my love. I'm happy now. Your son is good. You are free. No diapers, no bills—some relief there,
huh?"

Still he looked wounded, but his face admitted there was truth in what she said.
He would never have stayed,
she knew with certainty.
He'd have flown away.

"Who?" he asked.

"Joseph."

Peter nodded once, not surprised. He looked away from her for the first time. "You're sure this is how it goes?"

"Very sure."

He was coming undone. It was harder to see Peter in the face of the shaky teenager who stood before her clinging to her sides.
Julieta suddenly saw the world as Cree must: All the forces that had converged to bring Peter back were starting to slip away.
All the longings that had propelled him had been answered or denied by the only person who could. Again the scary horrible
dream tumbled in the back of his mind, fighting and guns and falling rocks, but it was remote and irreconcilable with what
was happening. This was so much preferable. Still, he felt dismay.

A thought came that had never occurred to her before, and an overwhelming gratitude blossomed in her. "You did something wonderful
for me."

He turned back to her. "Oh, yeah? What was that?"

"You showed me how to fly. From that very first day at the mesa. You didn't know it, but you gave me freedom from Garrett.
You broke his hold on me."

"Glad I could be of service, ma'am." He was imitating a cowboy, protecting himself with some swagger. But she could see she'd
pleased him.

"Can you help me that way again? Would you?"

"You know I would. How?"

"You . . . be free. That makes me free. You fly. Then I can fly."

"Where should I fly?"

"Out there," Julieta said, choking.

She couldn't be sure which landscape she indicated with her gesture. Behind Tommy, the sun still had not risen but was so
close to the horizon it gilded the rim of the land with golden fire. Where Peter was, on the front porch of the house in Oak
Springs, the stars had come out through the darkening blue and the sky looked deeply domed at the zenith. The shape of the
mesa and the rolling swells of sagebrush were magical in the near dark, turning faint as the ghost's world lost conviction.

Peter looked out at it as if he'd just seen something astonishing. He turned back to give her a confiding smile and turned
away again. Something like a reflection of light skipped out of Tommy as Peter stepped off the porch.

His foot never touched the ground.

Tommy almost fell, but Julieta caught him in time.