Daniel Hecht_Cree Black 02 (15 page)

Tommy put down the bat as the woman at third base began to come in. He jogged out into the field with only a slight hitch
in his leg.

"What does
bilagâana
mean?" Cree called back to Lynn Pierce.

"White person."

"So what was that Tommy said to them?"

Lynn was looking after him with a proprietary pride. "He said something like, 'Yeah, I'm too young and you're too ugly.' And
then a pun that doesn't translate perfectly—it's better in Navajo. Ben was making an indirect pass at you and Tommy was telling
him to mind his manners." She turned to Cree with a prim, apologetic smile. "Make any progress, Doctor? I was . . . kind of
listening."

"I don't know," Cree told her. "I really don't know."

15

"CREE!" She was walking back toward the infirmary, determined to lie down, when the voice startled her out of her thoughts.
She looked back to see Julieta, striding toward her from the administration building. She walked quickly and wore a frown
full of the angry determination of a prize-fighter coming out of his corner. "How's your head?"

Cree put her hand to her bandaged forehead. "I'm fine. Going to be headachy for a few days, that's all. What's going on?"

"I know who the ghost is."

Cree's jaw dropped: This was quite a shift for a woman who'd expressed so many reservations not so long ago. "Urn, that's
terrific. Who?"

Julieta hesitated, making some decision as she looked at Cree through narrowed eyes. "Are you up for riding? I'll show you."

Cree assessed her weariness, measured the gas in the tank and found maybe just enough. "Sure," she said.

They saddled the two mares. Cree found she remembered most of the ritual of blanket and saddle, bridle and bit and stirrups;
Julieta checked her work and needed only to draw Breeze's belly cinch tighter. The black gelding looked on curiously as they
led the mares out the rear corral gate and mounted.

Astride her horse, Julieta looked ravishing. Her black hair floated around her head and over her shoulders as she sat straight
and proud. Once they were on their way, she pulled back the thick mane and put on a cowboy hat that held it behind her, then
slipped on a pair of sunglasses. In the shades and hat, leather jacket and snug jeans, she looked gorgeous and dangerous,
a woman warrior.

Julieta said nothing as she led them straight north at a trot. Cree posted adequately, rediscovering more of her rusty riding
skills by the minute. It helped that Breeze was a gentle horse and seemed to want to go today. The rhythm of the trot echoed
in Cree's sore head, but the pain was manageable. Especially with her curiosity piqued. She wished Julieta would slow down
and explain what this was all about.

And the land was beautiful. Here was the big gesture she'd hungered for since coming to this place, a way of taking in the
landscape. Sky. Earth. Rocks. Distance. The wordless company of the willing animal between her knees. Cree savored the air,
clean but faintly spiced with a perfume that the grocery truck driver had told her was piñon-wood smoke. The only sound was
the drum of hoofs, the creak of leather, the
whuff
of Breeze's breathing.

They put a couple of miles behind them before Julieta slowed and allowed Cree to fall into a walk beside her.

The iridescent green sunglasses turned toward her. Beneath the glistening ovals, Julieta's mouth was a thin, straight line.
"It's Garrett McCarty. My ex. He was always a complete and total bastard and I guess he still is." The sunglasses turned back
to the north without waiting for a response.

Cree felt a sudden trepidation. Old animosities could cloud a witness's perspective on a haunting, and she had learned to
be wary of making assumptions based on them. Especially if it involved an ex-husband or -wife or -lover. Yes, there was always
a lot left unresolved between people who had once been deeply intimate and then had broken away, and of course a revenant
often
did
prove to be an ex, driven to settle the accounts of love or hate. But just as often the kind of dead-certain identification
she saw in Julieta now was merely the product of lingering hostility and paranoia in the living person.

"Why do you say that?"

"Because he died not far from here. I told you about that, didn't I?"

"Lip at the mine area?"

Julieta nodded.

"That's, what, fifteen miles or so from the school?"

"As the crow flies, more like ten. Why? Is that too far for a ghost to come?

A memory flashed in front of Cree's eyes, real enough to touch: Mike, standing there in downtown Philadelphia at the moment
of his death in Los Angeles. "No," she said sadly. "Not necessarily. But why—"

"Why would Garrett come back? To hurt me."

" But—"

"He hated me because I divorced him and because I came out better in the settlement terms and because I won a couple of fights
with McCarty Energy over the years. Maybe because I had the gall to have a couple of relationships over the years, didn't
live like a
nun
after divorcing the great man. I think he also suspected I had a lover while we were still married, or at least before the
divorce was final."

"Did you?"

Julieta's jaw dropped at Cree's presumption and she appeared to catch herself on the edge of an indignant denial. She took
a deep breath and then her shoulders slumped. "Yes," she said quietly. But then the resistance flared again: "Yes! I had a
lover, okay? I was twenty-four and I was married to an old man who I never saw and who was screwing every secretary in his
employ and every female social climber in New Mexico! I had a lover. But Garrett never knew about it. I made damn sure he
never knew, because I wasn't going to let him use it against me in the divorce. It was perfectly all right for him to chase
tail, but for
me
to actually
love
somebody for the first and only time in my life, that would have been unforgivable!"

It was so clearly a defensive outpouring, and for Cree a little piece of the puzzle fell into place: Julieta's hard side,
this angry warrior woman and the efficient administrator who explained her every action so logically and dispassionately—
it was just the armor over the vulnerable person who lived inside. The woman who had invited her to go for a ride within moments
of Cree's arriving yesterday and then concealed the gesture by explaining that the horses needed exercise. The woman who'd
so badly needed Joseph Tsosie's brief touch last night.

Julieta clucked to Madie, slapped the reins, and began to canter ahead as if fleeing her own words. Cree touched her heels
to Breeze's flanks, urging her to follow, and soon they were pummeling full tilt over the rolling land. The canter was less
jolting than the trot, the air seemed to flow through Cree's head and wash away the pain. The bare ground and low sagebrush
rolled away beneath the lunging horse, unchanging.

When Julieta finally slowed again, Cree caught up and they walked again as the horses blew.
So many questions,
Cree was thinking.
Where to even start?

"But, Julieta—why would he come into one of your students as a way to punish
you?
"

"Because it's a great way to bring the school down. He knew it was the one thing I loved, the one thing I believed in doing
on my own. Trust me, Garrett was very smart, very insightful when it came to figuring out somebody's weaknesses. He built
an empire on knowing the best way to hurt somebody."

Cree wanted to point out that ghosts were seldom so intentional and devious. Usually their motives, if you could call so elemental
an urge a motive, were more like compulsions, just reflexes of their psyches. But there were more pressing issues to get out
of the way.

"Why would it settle in Tommy Keeday? Instead any of the other kids?"

"I don't know!" Even behind the camouflage of the sunglasses, Julieta's face looked agonized. "How could I possibly know?"

"Does Tommy have any characteristics that would make him particularly vulnerable? Joseph describes him as a boy with a lot
of internal conflicts—"

"Look, before all this, I'd spent maybe four hours with him. Once for his admission interview. A couple of chance encounters
around school. He was in the drawing class I teach, along with six other kids, but we had only two classes before all this
came up! Beyond that, I don't know anything about him but what I've read in his records."

"Then why do you care so deeply about him?"

"I care about all of my students! Every one of them! He's a very sick and troubled boy! I'd be the same with—"

"Why didn't you ever have children? You want children."

"Why didn't
you?
" Julieta shot back. "We're about the same age."

Cree bobbed her head: Clearly, Julieta would demand reciprocation for eveiything she revealed. "My husband died unexpectedly
before we had kids. We were going to. I'd like to, but I've never . . . I've never found the right man. Sometimes it makes
me feel very sad, very incomplete. No—it just about kills me, Julieta. I'm thirty-nine and probably I'll never have a child.
But I'm lucky to have two beautiful nieces who I'm very close to. Kind of their half-mom."

"So I'm half mom to my students." Julieta tipped her hat brim lower over her face.

The horses huffed and shied. As they craned their heads, Cree saw the object of their concern: a dead coyote, fifty feet ahead,
stretched along the ground as if it had died running. Its gray fur was matted, and something had been nibbling it, leaving
the eye sockets round black pits on its narrow skull. The belly had been eaten away, too, leaving a dark cavity and baring
a length of dirty white spine. She caught the smell as they let the horses find a wide route around it. The sight struck Cree
as sorrowful, a dark omen.

She waited until they were well past before continuing what increasingly felt like an interrogation: "Is that why you started
the school? To be near children—to be half mom?"

Julieta had found her armor in the interim. "What does my past have to do with Tommy? Look, I came to you with my best guess
as to who this 'entity' is. I've come a long way, haven't I? Aren't I doing a good job of embracing your worldview? Why don't
you go do whatever it is you do to find out if it's the rotten awful ghost of Garrett and then . . . exorcise it or kill it
or whatever's supposed to happen?"

"If it
is
Garrett's ghost, I need you to help me figure Garrett out. Tell me why his compulsion to hurt you would be so strong. That
it would manifest as an urge to vengeance so enduring it would continue even in the absence of his body, so deliberate it could
do anything as complex and devious as this."

Julieta's face was set as if indicating that she'd said as much as she'd intended to.

Frustrated, Cree briefly let go the reins, threw her shoulders back, and brushed her hair away from her face with both hands.
The bandage above her brow pinched.

They rode on at a walk for another ten minutes in silence. Julieta showed no indication she was going to say any more.

"Whatever it is," Cree said at last, "if it's the ghost of Garrett or someone else, I don't kill it. I wouldn't know how to
do that."

"Then what do you do?" Julieta said numbly.

"I figure out a way for it to come to terms with why it's there. And if you have any role in why it's there, I can only do
that if you do the same—come to terms with why it's there. If you're part of its world or play a role in its compulsions,
you're the one who has to let it free."

"If it's Garrett, I'd rather kill it."

Cree shook her head. "Can't. It's already dead. You've got to integrate it in some constructive way. Release it by somehow
dealing with its impulse."

Julieta brought Madie's head up and angled her path toward the left, up a low rise. Ahead, Cree saw the tip of a huge derrick
like the one she'd seen from the highway.

"I'd rather kill it," Julieta repeated quietly to herself.

16

THEY DISMOUNTED on a hilltop a hundred yards back from the edge of a cliff that marked a natural fold in the land. The broad,
shallow valley ran several miles to the east and west and was full of activity: swirling dust, vehicles, and, tiny as ants
next to the equipment, men. Mounds of mineral stuff lay heaped randomly, roads winding between them. Broad ramps led out of
coal trenches and up both sides of the valley, giant trucks inching up or down. About a mile to their left, Cree saw a colossal
orange cube surmounted by a towering crane like the one she'd seen from the highway, rotating as it dragged soil and rock
in a bucket the size of a house. Closer, along the near side of the valley, a complex of yellow steel buildings stood surrounded
by parking lots full of cars and pickup trucks. A rumble of engines filled the air, and diesel exhaust smothered the sweet
scent of the desert.

Julieta took off her sunglasses, squinting against the glare and the distance. She pointed to a little sports car, incongruous
among the pickups.

"Proof positive our industrious Donny is on the job today."

"He won't mind you being here? If you're such enemies—"

"I called him earlier. He gave me permission to trespass. We occasionally trade such little courtesies as part of our arbitrated
right-of-way settlement. Not that I don't ride on McCarty property all the time anyway—this isn't their only mine site, Donny's
here only on Saturdays. And nobody else would give a damn."

"Why did we come here today, Julieta? I don't need to see this. I need to hear your story."

"You want to see where Garrett died, don't you? The dragline—that's the huge derrick thing—has moved since then. I wanted
to show you where it was when he died, so if the ghost had, whatever you call it, perimortem memories, you'd know where the
accident happened. I don't know how this works—would its memories kind of cling to the dragline, or to the place where the
dragline was? He fell off it when it was over there"—she gestured with her sunglasses to the east—" about where that spit
of land sticks out above the valley. You can't see it from here, but there's a used-up pit there. The whole operation was—"

"Julieta. I've done the math, okay?"

"What math?" Julieta started to replace her sunglasses, but Cree caught her arm and held her gaze. Beautiful astonishing dark
blue eyes, suddenly frightened.

"Tommy's age, your divorce. He's your child, isn't he? That's where we should begin."

Julieta's expression changed suddenly. It was the face of a person receiving an arrow—one that had been expected. Feeling
it pierce deep, painful yet familiar from years of anticipating and imagining its stab. She dropped her sunglasses and shook
Cree's hand away as she stepped clumsily back to sit on a slab of sandstone.

Cree took Madie's reins and tied both horses to a pinon tree before retrieving the glasses and sitting next to Julieta. Below,
the mine ground away at its business. A solitary crow, flying above them out over the rim, seemed to change its mind when
it saw the operation and veered away to the east.

"Is this how it's supposed to be?" Julieta said quietly. "The way you . . . do what you do?"

Cree was anything but certain, but some reassurance was called for. She arched her shoulders, took a deep breath, and swept
her hair back with both hands. "There are a lot of aspects to it. But right now, yes, this is what we should do."

"Why do you do that?"

" Do—?"

"You're talking like me. You're acting like me. That gesture." Julieta took off her hat, shook her hair free, and then repeated
Cree's movements. Only then did Cree realize she'd been doing it.

"I'm sorry. It's . . . unconscious." Cree nodded and tried to smile.

"It's what I do when I'm frustrated," Julieta went on. "Or getting down to business. To something that's hard but that has
to be done."

"This is definitely one of those."

Julieta looked out over the mine. "I'm not the confiding type. I'm not the confessing type. I've never been to a priest or
a psychoanalyst in my life, and I have no desire to."

"I'm not your psychoanalyst."

"What are you, then?"

Cree didn't know the name for it.
Think of me as your mirror. Your echo.
No, too solitary.
Your sister. Your friend.
Too presumptuous.

"I'm someone kind of like you," she said at last. "Different enough from other people that I don't often trust them to understand
me. And not the confessing type."

Maybe that helped a little. Julieta nodded. Still, it took her a long time to begin.

She married Garrett in 1982, full of optimism. Twenty years old. She dropped out of the university to devote herself to her
exciting new life. Oh, she had doubts—it had all happened so fast. Sometimes she wondered if what she felt was love; more
often she wondered if he really loved her, if there was anything in it for him besides her looks and sex and having a young
thing on his arm to impress his fellow rich codgers. For a while the answer she gave herself was that, if that were all he'd
wanted, he could have had it with lots of women without bothering to marry. There were moments when he seemed to show real
tenderness and appreciation. And she wasn't just some young thing, she reminded herself, she was the smart, presentable, well-mannered
daughter of a good family.

Anyway, she swore, if she wasn't good enough, she'd work twice as hard to become good enough.

She got part of the answer within the first year. Patrick Kelly sold his new son-in-law his struggling heavy-equipment business,
handing over several lots full of earth-moving machinery at fire sale prices. Julieta never knew exactly what the arrangement
was, but it involved keeping the name Kelly Equipment and retaining her father as its boss. The deal was a rescue from likely
bankruptcy, and anyway, as Garrett reminded them, it was all in the family now.

Within six months of their wedding, pressing duties obligated Garrett to spend most of his time at their house in Albuquerque,
leaving Julieta alone at the Oak Springs house. Occasionally they did things together, but always in public settings—corporate
events, charity balls, or political fund-raisers where Garrett needed a well-mannered beauty on his arm and where there was
no chance to talk about their relationship.

At first, it really wasn't too bad. True, she was often lonely; her main company consisted of the servants and groundskeepers
who maintained what was then a handsome ranch estate. But living mostly apart, that was only temporary, Julieta told herself.
She loved the house and the land. She'd always wanted horses, and now she had four of them; she rode every day. She kept busy,
volunteering at the Gallup hospital where she first met Joseph Tsosie. Garrett was kind, in his way, and she wanted to be
a good wife; she was willing to wait for this period of preoccupation with business to end so they could talk about their
marriage, their plans, the prospect of having kids.

Anyway, she told herself, this was probably the way love worked, especially if you were married to such an important, busy
man. Her parents were certainly no kind of example to follow.

Somewhere in that first year, though, a number of troubling things happened. Coal prices were depressed, and in a cost-saving
move McCarty Energy consolidated management; Kelly Equipment got swallowed whole by the bigger company. When the dust settled,
the result of the deal was that Garrett had made off with Kelly's equipment inventory and accounts receivable, netting about
ten million dollars, and Kelly had ceased to exist.

But it was still all in the family, Julieta assured herself. It wasn't Garrett's fault; Kelly had been floundering for years.
And Daddy still had a terrific job. Sure, he had less authority, but frankly he was probably in a niche better suited to his
talents.

It was about then that she began noticing the amused or averted eyes of some of their acquaintances in Albuquerque. One of
them, an older woman Julieta thought she knew well enough to confide in, took her aside at some function. She was an energy
exec's wife, too, a slim, hard, fifty-year-old with a high silicone chest and a taut-skinned face that had been maintained
with ruthless discipline, and she explained that this was how it worked. They like us younger, she said, because it makes
them feel more virile around their buddies and competitors. But they're busy. They can't drag us along everywhere. They like
having company where they are, but they don't need to be held down by their wives, even much younger ones. And we don't really
want to do everything with them, all those boring meetings and golf and the backroom deal making and all, do we? We don't
really want to know everything. Give it a few years. You get used to it.

Used to it, Julieta mumbled. To what?

Honey baby, this is not some kind of a secret, is it? You were a beauty queen, weren't you? That means you're a practical
girl. You figured out what counts, and you did
very
well for yourself. All you have to do is keep being practical.

What
isn't a secret?

You're his
wife,
the older woman reminded her reassuringly. But then her kindness took on a cruel, satisfied edge as she swigged some more
scotch and went on: Really, none of us ever thought Garrett would marry again, not with his tastes. So you did very well.
The others don't matter. They appear for a few weeks or months, they get a sports car or a diamond bracelet, and they go away.
Trust me. I've been married to Elliot for twenty-six years. Now he's a doddering old fart, too old to get up to much mischief,
and I'm the one who gets to have the fun. But if I'd raised a fuss about it back whenever, it wouldn't have lasted this long.
I wouldn't be where I am now. But I was like you. Smart. Practical.

It turned out that Garrett's affairs were no big secret or even much of a scandal. In his social circle, it was something
of a gentleman's hobby. One of the things they acquired and compared notes on. Almost a little competition, like their golf.

It devastated Julieta. For the first time, she realized that this was not and never would be the true love she yearned for.
Garrett had shrewdly folded together several objectives by marrying her: He'd attained both a presentable trophy wife, naive
and isolated enough to be conveniently set aside when not needed, and, as a little sweetener, the easy conquest of Kelly Equipment.
But the things she wanted—a relationship and a family—weren't part of anybody's plans.

She was afraid to do anything about it. She couldn't bring it up with Garrett: She knew that the older woman was right, he'd
shed her completely if she made it an issue. And she couldn't admit to her parents that there was a problem. They'd only blame
her.
Now she saw, too, that her father's job depended on her staying married to Garrett. Dad had ended up losing money on the deal
with McCarty Energy; her parents needed his salary.

She spent a year or so trying to think it through. When she was with Garrett, she tried hard to be a better companion and
wife, beautiful and spirited and devoted, hoping to win his full attention; but she began to feel increasingly used and soiled
after his rare visits to the house. She made excuses to stop going to those excruciating social events. She rode her horses
hard, every day. She volunteered at the Indian Hospital. Without any real friends from high school or UNM, unable to talk
to her parents about her situation, she remained a virtual exile at the house.

Julieta had taken off her hat and was sitting cross-legged on the slab of sandstone, elbows on knees, shoulders slumped. Staring
at the ground, hair veiling her face, she looked like a teenager, angry at herself but abject and so much softer now.

Given what Julieta was revealing, Cree thought, and the intensity of the feelings involved, the idea of Garrett McCarty's
perseverating after death was well worth exploring. She stared speculatively at the mammoth dragline as Julieta continued.

"I was too young to know what to do. I really didn't have enough perspective to decide if this whole arrangement was maybe
sort of okay or completely wrong and horrible. And I didn't have anyone to talk to about it. Well, except Joseph . . . we
got together once in a while, and I felt safe confiding in him."

"What was his take on your situation?"

"He very tactfully always told me the same thing—I should think better of myself, I should follow my heart and not let anyone
treat me like that. But he never forced his opinion on me." The memory brought a wan smile to her lips, and the glance she
gave Cree was quick and shy. "His response was very ' Navajo'—restrained and patient. Our conversations always included a
lot of silence. He was my first Navajo friend." The smile widened, then suddenly faltered and faded as some other memory intruded.

When she went on, she seemed to hurry, as if telling it before she could change her mind: "So this had been going on for two
years and I was pretty much a wreck. And then one day I rode out to the foot of the mesa and was sitting on a boulder staring
back at the house when I saw another rider coming. He was riding like a crazy person, hell-bent for leather, but he wasn't
actually
going
anywhere, he was just . . . it's hard to describe . . .
riding. Playing.
He went back and forth, around in circles, the way the swallows fly at sunset, just . . . swooping and spiraling for the fun
of it."

The rider was a young man, dressed in denim work clothes with his shirt unbuttoned and flapping behind him, hair long, chest
bare and belly tucked lean below the chiseled lines of his ribs. He'd ride with his hands up above him, he'd get up on his
knees with arms spread wide, staying on the wiry palomino by meshing perfectly with the horse's movements. He'd lie down with
his feet over the rump and arms around the lunging neck, he'd jump over brush and boulders. All this was bareback. He was
laughing for the sheer pleasure it gave him.

As he circled closer to Julieta, she recognized him: He was one of the estate's grounds crew, a Navajo named Peter Yellowhorse
who came three days a week to tend to the gardens and pool and fix things around the house and barns. Back among the boulders,
she watched him for about fifteen minutes. He didn't see her until he was about a hundred feet away, and when he did, he just
about fell off.