Daniel Hecht - Land of Echoes

She finished her coffee, checked her watch and found that she'd been sitting for almost an hour. Still, she felt good and lingered a little longer.

Cree would be back on Thursday. She'd have a lot to think about. She'd done an incredible job with Julieta and the gorgeous Navajo doctor, zeroing right in on the crucial knot that held everything back, kept everything snarled. But Joyce doubted she'd do as good a job when it came to her own love life. Ed hadn't talked about the parallels there, but Joyce was sure he'd noticed them. You'd have to be a major dummy not to. And of course Cree would come back all bent out of shape by it. For more reasons than one. She'd absorbed so much of Julieta McCarty, she probably couldn't even tell whether her feelings toward Ed were truly her own, or some kind of resonance with Julieta's thing with Joseph. Heartbreaking, really.

On one hand, Cree was as ready for a man as anyone Joyce had ever known, but on the other hand, it was complicated. Joyce couldn't decide where the problem lay, exactly. Once, she would have said, Easy-the shadow of her dead husband's hanging over her, her very own ghost. And the cure for that was obvious. She'd told Cree as much last spring, and Cree had wisely gone back to see Paul in New Orleans.

But maybe it was more complex than that, more even than making a choice between Ed and Paul. Seeing Cree out there, riding, walking, the way she expanded into the place, Joyce knew she'd come back in love with the land, the rocks, the big sky, the Navajo medicine men, even the ghosts, as much as with Paul Fitzpatrick or Edgar Mayfield. Cree wasn't all that available because she already had a lover: mystery. Or maybe just life. The mystery of life. Whatever.

Joyce honestly had no idea how you could help somebody with a situation like that.

The old Keedays' place was transformed. The Evil Way was not as large or long a ceremony as others, but it still required substantial preparation. Tommy's closest aunts, uncles, and cousins had come to participate and help out, along with a few nonfamily, including Cree, Julieta, Joseph, and Joseph's uncle. With the medicine man and his two assistants, there were around two dozen. Pickup trucks and station wagons were parked haphazardly all around the grandparents' home. The kitchen stove in the trailer was going, and a couple of fire pits had been set up outside to help prepare the food needed to nourish the gathering during the two-day Way. Two sheep had been butchered and now hung from the branches of a small cottonwood, soon to be roasted.

Cree helped Ellen make piles of fry bread, dropping the dough disks into smoking oil, spearing them with a fork, rotating them as they bubbled, flipping them when the underside was golden brown. It was good to see Ellen again, to bask in her goodwill and good humor.

She met relatives, tried to keep track of their names and connections to Tommy, gave up, decided it didn't matter. They were all family. They were here to help him. To heal him. To remind him who he was.

The mood was mixed. In general, the preparations created a festive atmosphere: people laughing quietly as they worked, exchanging gossip, chipping in food and money, giving orders to each other, complaining. But there were no young children present, and an undertone of solemnity and concern grew as the time for the ceremony itself drew closer. Being possessed by a spirit was serious and dangerous. Even the inevitable half dozen dogs seemed restrained and generally stayed out from underfoot.

Ts'aa'lil'ini, the Singer, was a small, vigorous man in his sixties. He was dressed in khakis and a white shirt with an antique Pendleton blanket worn over his shoulders as a robe, and had a serious face. Cree found his dignity and gravity imposing. Ellen and the grandparents introduced her to him, explaining in Navajo her connection to the situation. He nodded his head, his bright, knowing eyes on Cree's, and invited her to participate. Cree thanked him sincerely, explained she'd be more comfortable just helping out on the periphery of things, and let him go about his work.

Cree watched as Ts'aa'lil'ini and his helpers brought the ceremonial materials from their pickup and laid them out in the appropriate order. Corn pollen, plant materials, colored sand for sand paintings, mountain tobacco, spirit gifts, fire materials: One of the assistants, a chubby man in his late twenties, explained the significance of each and the role it would play in the ceremony. The basket on which offerings would be placed was made of sumac bark, he told her, which gave it its scent. The whole thing was intricate and full of symbolism that was rooted all the way back in the beautiful and complex Navajo creation stories. Cree was aware of standing on the far side of a vast cultural canyon that made real comprehension difficult. After a while, awed and overwhelmed, she excused herself and went to sit over near one of the sheep sheds, where she could take it all in but not get underfoot.

She had done her part. What Tommy needed now, she couldn't help with. He was in the best possible hands.

Julieta and Joseph had come together, made the rounds of introductions, and got right to work with the others. The mutton would be buried in coals, so Joseph and a couple of other men were digging shallow trenches near the fires. Julieta helped bring firewood, lugged cases of soft drinks from trucks, joined Ellen at the fry bread assembly line. Sometimes Joseph paused to watch Julieta. Sometimes she'd turn her head to check on him. When they passed near each other, Cree saw, you could practically see it in the air between them: a shimmer of mutual awareness, fraught with desire and anticipation. The sight was very gratifying.

A tall, very thin Navajo man came toward her from the hogan, cupping a match around a cigarette as he walked. Joseph's uncle, Cree remembered. She'd met him only briefly but had liked him instantly. He was elderly but hale, his nose veined from too much whiskey, fingers stained from too many cigarettes, his suit somewhat out of date but clean and well pressed. He struck her as the kind of guy Pop would have liked.

"Yaateeh," Cree said.

"Hey, you say that pretty well!" Uncle Joe said, looking impressed. He sat down stiffly against the log fence next to her, unconcerned about getting his suit dirty. He spat out a tidbit of tobacco and squinted at the men working near the fire pits. "Know what it means? It's how we say hello, but it means 'It is good.'"

"I didn't know. That's lovely."

"Nice day for this. Perfect weather. That's a good sign for the ceremony." Uncle Joe looked up at the benign sky, then glanced over at her. "Taking a breather?"

"Oh, I was just getting in the way. It looks like it's all under control." She smiled over at him and he returned it. "I'm a little tired," she confessed.

"From what Joseph tells me, you've already done old Ts'aa'lil'ini's work for him. He should return some of the gifts."

"Not at all. This is just what Tommy needs. This is just right."

Uncle Joe chuckled at himself. "Listen to me! 'Old'? Who am I to talk? The guy's younger than me! Did anyone tell you what his name means-Ts'aa'lil'ini?"

"Nope. What?"

" 'Basket Maker.'"

He gave her a sideways grin and a sharp look as if this information was a gift or surprise for her, and Cree nodded as though she understood. She found him enormously charming and concluded that he must have been quite the lady-killer in his younger years. Like Ellen, he was the kind of person you immediately felt you'd known for a lifetime.

Uncle Joe got serious and narrowed his eyes as he continued watching his nephew. Joseph had taken off his white shirt and was digging in his T-shirt. He had a good build, nice proportions, muscles that moved smoothly in his shoulders as he levered and lifted the shovel. Over near the trailer, Julieta turned her head to admire him briefly. Cree was surprised to feel a little pang of jealousy.